Historical evolution of scientific knowledge in Turkey: The discipline of economics from the 1930s to the 1960s

This dissertation analyzes the historical evolution of the economics discipline through the publications of Istanbul University Faculty of Economics and Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences in between the 1930s and the 1960s. This period, from the foundation of the Faculty of Economics till the new mainstream was established by the neoclassical synthesis, represents a blurred era during when the discipline of economics was shaped by various social and political factors both locally and internationally. In formation of the teaching of economics and economic thought at the university level, this study concentrates on the roles of academic economists who appeared as the main actors in the translation process of the current economic theories and the precepts of various schools of thought into local. Based on a detailed textual analysis on the university publications, this study examines in what ways and to what degree this translation was materialized in the local context, as well as how the economic knowledge, the scope and the components of the discipline of economics were conceptualized by academic economists in the zeitgeist. This dissertation argues that this reception/translation process that shaped the evolution of economics at the educational field went beyond an effort of imitating the experience of developed countries, but shaped by the utilization of eclectic methods within the context of local peculiarities, which reflects the influence of the value-added by academic economists.