1948 Economic Congress as a reflection of transition to a multiparty system in Turkey

In Turkey, the change that started with the multi-party life was not only in the political and social field, but also serious changes occurred in the economic policies. In this period, the private sector began to come to the fore, statist industrialization policies were criticized, and while foreign trade was liberalized, the development model based on agriculture began to come to the fore. Benefiting from the developing democratic environment, business circles led by the Istanbul Merchant Association organized an Economics Congress in Istanbul between 22-27 November 1948 in order to influence the economic policies to be implemented and to open up space for the private sector. In this congress, statism and state intervention, foreign trade and tax reform were discussed, while statism was strongly criticized, liberalization in trade was demanded. On the subject of tax reform, after the fierce debates, the government decided to support the Income Tax bill. In this study titled 1948 Economic Congress As A Reflection Of Transition To A Multiparty System in Turkey, the effect of the democratic environment that developed with the multi-party life on economic policies and as a reflection of this, the evaluation of the issues that came to the agenda in the 1948 Economics Congress was made based on written and visual archive documents. What are the criticisms and suggestions made in the congress, how appropriate and applicable the proposals are, constitute the problem of our study. While the debates and decisions taken at the 1948 Economics Congress expressed discomfort with the current policies, on the other hand, they deeply affected the economic policies to be implemented in the near future. In this study, it is explained what kind of democratic climate was during the transition from a single-party understanding to a multi-party system, how the 1948 Economics Congress, which was held in this period of change, brought criticism and solution proposals to the current economic situation, was examined in various aspects, and the political and economic changes and transformations that occurred in this direction were shown.