German Influence on Turkish Economic Thought and Policy

The focus of this research project is the one-way flow of economic knowledge from Germany to Turkey between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. Such a research will benefit scholars of history of economic thought and economic history, since it will provide another example of heterodox continental influence on economic thought and policy, before Anglo-American mainstream economics almost entirely dominated economics as a social science after the Second World War. By the end of the 19^th century, in the Ottoman intellectual circles, similar to the other parts of the world, the German Historical School (along with Marxian economics) stood as the most serious challenger of the Classical approach. Interventionist and protectionist policies recommended by the members of the German Historical School became increasingly popular in the economic discussions and among the policy advisors in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. This was the first visible influence exerted by the German economists, but it would not be the final one. Another important period was the 1930s when a group of German scholars, who either refused to comply with or escaped from the Nazi regime in Germany, sought for refuge in Turkey. The contributions of these scholars (through their publications, courses they offered and their relations with the other members of academia) to the intellectual landscape of the 1930s’ Turkey deserve a thorough analysis which is conducted within this research project.