Talk:
“Statism in Early Republican Turkey: An International Perspective”
by
Asst. Prof. Samuel J. Hirst
Department of International Relations
Bilkent University
samhirst@bilkent.edu.tr
Date and Room Info:
Wednesday, November 20, 2024, 15:30 p.m.
A-130
Abstract:
This talk draws on Sam Hirst’s new book, Against the Liberal Order: The Soviet Union, Turkey, and Statist Internationalism, 1919-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), to reflect on a central subject in the history of the early Turkish Republic. In the 1930s, statism became a global phenomenon, and much of it—from the Ankara government’s first five-year plan to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal—was influenced by Soviet planning. Equally, however, Turkish elites drew on their own traditions of statist political economy, a history that dated back to the Ottoman period. This talk asks how an international perspective can (and cannot) contribute to our understanding of the history of statism defined in national, Turkish terms.
Short Biography
Sam Hirst is assistant professor in Bilkent’s department of international relations. His published work focuses on the history of international cooperation in the twentieth century and has covered subjects ranging from the Soviet Union’s establishment of diplomatic ties with Afghanistan in the 1920s and Soviet-Turkish cinematographic cooperation on the 1934 film, Ankara–The Heart of Turkey, to Vedat Dalokay’s 1975 visit to Moscow in search of funding for Ankara’s metro. His book, Against the Liberal Order, offers a new interpretation of Soviet-Turkish relations in the interwar period, using the history of bilateral interactions to address the way that competing internationalisms have shaped modern world politics.