The relation between individual and state in the single party period of Turkey (1923-1945): Ahmet Ağaoğlu's individual thought

The necessity of people to live in a community has resulted in institutionalization with the changing conditions of social life and the state structures extending to the present day have emerged. The most important break in this process was realized by modernization in the Western world. The idea that scientific and economic development in Western societies stems from the modern state structure deeply influenced non-Western societies. For this reason, some powers in non-Western societies have turned to modernization policies in order to capture the rise of the West. While some of these powers adopted a gradual progress, some have taken radical steps. The rulers who follow the second way have entered into a total construction process by suppressing individual rights and freedoms in the name of modernization. The single party period of Turkey is a period in which a positivist understanding of government tries to place nation-state ideology. According to this study, the reconstruction effort imposed by the single party administration with community engineering could not achieve the development in the West and led the relation between individual and state to a domination relationship in favor of the state. Moreover, the understanding of ideological management, which is considered as instrumental in the first place, has gained continuity. Ahmet Ağaoğlu, one of the ideologues of Kemalism, tried to legitimize Westernization with the idea of individual. In the study, the single party period was seen as the establishment and foundation period of Turkey. The individual state relationship shaped in this process was examined with the exemplary event method and was analyzed through Ahmet Ağaoğlu's individual thought. In this way, it is aimed to reveal the problems that are on the basis of the relation between individual and state in Turkey in line with a scientific discipline.