Türkiye'de garbiyatçılık ve kalkınma politikaları: Demokrat Parti Dönemi üzerine bir çalışma

The present study analyzes the Democrat Party (DP) era (1950-1960) from the framework ofdevelopment. Taking development as a system of power, a body of knowledge and adiscourse that emerged after the World War II and through the analysis of expert reports,scientific studies, official documents, newspaper coverage and secondary sources, a numberof arguments are made. It is argued that the relations between Turkish governments anddevelopment institutions contained an element of power that crystallized in the legitimacy anduse of science and expertise. Through the configuration of Turkey as a ?developing? and?modernizing? country and the definition of its needs, certain points of intervention andcertain possibilities for the transfer of knowledge, capital and expertise were created. It is alsoargued that within the relations development, Turkish governments pursued their ownagendas, and through their agency, they opposed and transformed the impositions andsuggestions of the US government and international development institutions to some extent.The thesis also demonstrates, via its employment of the notion of Occidentalism, how thediscourse of development provided intellectual elites with the legitimate language to think andspeak about social change and make political claims about Turkey with reference to animagined West and western modernity.