Doğan Avcıoğlu's understanding of historianism

Intensive arguments about basic problems of country have been made among Turkish intellectuals in 1960s. These problems include the reasons of being underdeveloped, unstability of democracy, weakness of civil society and tyranny of state. Many intellectuals looked for answers by looking at history and came up with a macro theories of history. These resulted in sub-arguments like land regime of Ottoman Empire and new development methods to follow. A lot of sociologists, political scientist, economists, historians and even novelist – Kemal Tahir- have joined these arguments. Doğan Avcıoğlu holds an important place in these arguments. His history thesis, offers for actual politics have triggered arguments hat will be discussed for years to follow. His 6- volumed piece Türklerin Tarihi (History of Turks), 2-volumed piece Türkiye'nin Düzeni (Order of Turkey) and articles in Yön Journal have left important Marks on leftist literature. In order to understand his theories in a better way, other theorists with macro theories of history were included, examined, criticised and compared in this study. In this study, basic theories of the leftist movements which are TWP, NDR and Yön were examined by taking books of main theorists of these movements into consideration. In the first part, Niyazi Berkes, Sence Divitçioğlu and İdris Küçükömer who were close to TİP and Mihri Belli who were the main theorist of the MDD were studied. In addition to that, although they haven't offered a leftist theory, Şerif Mardin and Metin Heper are included in that part by considering the effectiveness of their theories and with the aim of comparison with other works. In the second part theories of Doğan Avcıoğlu who was the leader of the Yön Movement was studied and compared with other theories in detail by examining his books. An argument was brought forward about which theory is the closest one to Marxist Historical Approach although they all claim to be. By remembering the fact that it was a hard work to study these theorists since they were very productive theorists, content analysis method was applied and a qualitative and interpretive study was conducted.