How were Atatürk's thoughts on the economy shaped?

I commemorate with gratitude Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the leader of our liberation and the founding of our homeland, on the 86th anniversary of his passing. I strive to do my part to uphold Atatürk's principles and revolutions. I share what I know about the Enlightenment Revolutions not only on anniversaries and national holidays, but at every opportunity and on every platform.  

Understanding Atatürk and upholding his principles and revolutions is not about getting stuck in the nostalgia of the past. It is the goal of grasping the spirit of these principles and revolutions, ensuring their application in today's world, and “rising above the level of contemporary civilization.” 

Atatürk's revolutions are not “static revolutions” that are finished, bound to a specific time, place, or dogma. The goal of “rising above the level of contemporary civilization” and his words, “Science is the truest guide in life,” very clearly demonstrate a “permanent revolution” in accordance with the requirements of the age.

Some principles are permanent, independent of time and place. 

Secularism, which leaves the individual free in their orientation toward God and the state free in the administration of the country, as the source of the modern state, modern law, and democracy;

Nationalism, which rejects the racist approach that defines the nation-state;

Populism, which prioritizes fair distribution against exploitation, determining political and economic preferences in citizen-state relations;

Republicanism, which takes sovereignty from dynasties and monarchies and gives it to the nation; the validity and permanence of these principles in the age we live in are indisputable.

If you make the concept of nationalism based on racism, you have abandoned the nation-state and accepted division, losing the integrity of the country.  

The subject we must study in the most detail in our effort to interpret Atatürk's principles and revolutions under today's conditions and create economic policies accordingly will undoubtedly be Statism. 

The principle of Statism is the principle most interpreted in different directions by Atatürkists, left-socialist revolutionaries, liberals, and conservatives alike. Almost every viewpoint has looked at it from its own perspective. The change in economic policies implemented between 1923-29 and 1929-1930 has a major effect on the emergence of these different interpretations. But the subject cannot be reduced to such simplicity. Atatürk's principle of Statism did not emerge after 1929. It has existed from the beginning. Its application methods and forms developed differently according to the conditions of the day, especially after the Great Depression of 1929.

Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha had pointed to the necessity of statist policies in his opening speech to the Parliament on March 1, 1922, and in his opening speech at the Turkey Economic Congress held in İzmir on February 17, 1923.

 It would be appropriate to quote the following assessment by Ordinary Professor Dr. Sadi Irmak regarding the fact that people with different views look at Atatürk's Statism from different angles:

“Statism is a subject that has been toyed with and degenerated in the hands of bad politicians. In fact, statism is Mustafa Kemal's strongest front. Because statism is a humanistic, national view; it is as humanitarian as it is national, and its field is not just economic development. It is a view that also carries more social goals together.” (Ordinary Professor Dr. Sadi Irmak, Seminar on the Turkish Economy in the Atatürk Era, Yapı Kredi Bank, 1981- pp. 128-129)

How were Atatürk's thoughts on the economy shaped? It is useful to take a brief look.

In Atatürk's intellectual background, the influence of ideas that emerged after the French Revolution was significant. Concepts such as sovereignty belonging to the people, the nation-state, nationalism, secularism, human rights, citizenship rights, equality, freedom, and justice both formed the intellectual accumulation of the period and shaped Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's way of thinking. Again, the rebellion against the inequality of capitalism in the second half and especially the last quarter of the 19th century was effective in the emergence of both socialism (collectivism) and statism with an understanding between the two extremes (liberalism and socialism). 

ECONOMICS BOOKS READ BY ATATÜRK

If we look at Atatürk's library and the economic trends dominant in the West at that time, we can better grasp Atatürk's statist approach to the economy. Here, Prof. Dr. Zafer Toprak's book, *Atatürk: The Evolution of the Founding Philosophy*, provides important clues.

“Like many thinkers of the period, Atatürk reached his economic views through solidarism, which was a widespread system of thought. His primary reference source was France's solidarist economists. At that time, Charles Gide and Charles Rist, in particular, were well known in Turkey. Charles Gide's four-volume 'Lessons in Scientific Economics' and the history of economic thought movements titled 'History of Economic Doctrines from the Physiocrats to the Present Day,' which he wrote with Charles Rist, were in Atatürk's library in both French and Turkish. Among the classical economists, only the 1852 edition of Jean-Baptiste Say's 'Cours complet d’économie politique pratique' (Applied Political Economy) was in his library.

In terms of Atatürk's period, the number of works related to economics in his rich library remained limited. Apart from the books mentioned above, the books related to economics were works on Turkey's financial and economic dependence.”

THE BIRTH OF STATISM - THE EFFECT OF SOLIDARISM - RECONCILIATION INSTEAD OF CONFLICT 

“Atatürk's economic views were formed more by the witness of recent history than by theoretical books. For this reason, he evaluated economics and politics together. He saw that the country's resources were limited, and therefore he believed in the state's involvement. In this regard, he had seen that a kind of 'etatisme,' or statism as it was later translated into Turkish, was born in many countries during the years of the Great War. 

The trend toward interventionism and statism observed after the Great War had come to the agenda in the last quarter of the 19th century. This was a reaction to a kind of liberalism. The period between 1873-1896, described as the Long Depression, was a phase when concerns about this arose. The liberal understanding in economics had benefited the rich. It had crushed the middle class and driven a segment of society into poverty. For underdeveloped countries that had not achieved industrialization, the result was disaster and misery. Socialism was the result of the reaction to these developments. The degrees of interventionist and socialist thought options, inspired by Karl Marx's ideas and going as far as collectivism, were a reaction of 'understatement' against the 'excess' of liberalism. Thinkers, struggling between excess and understatement, would arrive at an understanding in the middle of these two extreme currents, which was ultimately called 'etatisme' in the West. The economic model in which the state was emphasized manifested itself differently in every country. While social democracy was born in Germany, its name in France was solidarism, and it found favor around the Radical Party. 

The division of labor theory of thinkers such as Durkheim, Bougle, and Duguit was the result of the solidarist understanding developed by Leon Bourgeois, one of the leaders of the Radical Party. The labor movements in Germany and France had led to the birth of models that prioritized reconciliation in both countries. Marx was the sociologist of conflict and contradiction, while Durkheim and Weber were in favor of reconciliation and harmony. Turkey had chosen Durkheim from these options of sociology. The planned economy understanding that came to the agenda in England and Germany after the Great War, the practices that the French called guided economy, and the strengthening cooperative movement were ultimately different forms of expression of the understanding that would be known as statism in Turkey.” Prof. Dr. Zafer Toprak, ATATÜRK: The Evolution of the Founding Philosophy, Türkiye İş Bankası Publications.

BASIC PRINCIPLES

There is no relationship between Atatürk's understanding of statism and the state intervention proposed by Keynes after the 1929 depression. The Keynesian statist understanding is for “the capitalist system, which tries to kick the state out of the economy, to invite the state into the economy through the back door during periods of crisis, print money, and solve the crisis.” The prominence of the statist approach or a kind of “State capitalism” in the search for solutions to the income inequality between classes and countries caused by the Neoliberal system today requires us to examine the statism of the Atatürk era in much more detail.

There are two golden keys that we will always have in our hands when evaluating Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's principles and revolutions.

 “Freedom and Independence are my character.”

“Science is the truest guide in life.”

The symbolization of Atatürk's Principles in the Six Arrows and this symbol being the emblem of a party (CHP) was a misfortune for the principles. As a natural result of the competition between parties, it was stripped of its meaning. This loss of meaning reached such a point that even the top management of the CHP forgot the spirit of the Six Arrows and broke away from its philosophy many years ago. They even discussed painting one of the arrows green and purple.

Working to make Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Principles and Revolutions sovereign again in the Republic of Turkey is my duty. With infinite respect and gratitude…

For those interested… For the interpretation of the Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk principles and revolutions I mentioned in this article under today's conditions and the details of a manifesto, I recommend my book, 'Turkey's Factory Settings for the Twenty-First Century / Counter-Revolution in the Economy' (Naviga Publications and Amazon sales site), which I wrote at the beginning of this year.