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Political Modernization as Reflected in Bureaucratic Change: The Turkish Bureauracy and A “Historical Bureaucratic Empire” Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Metin Heper
Affiliation:
Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

Extract

Political modernization is a difficult concept to grapple with1. The traditional approach is to view the political systems of industrially developed Western countries as a model of, or sometimes even as a synonym for, a politically developed polity.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the Ninth World Congress of International Political Science Association, Montreal, Canada, August 19–25, 1973.Google Scholar

2 For an exposé of this approach and variations along the same line, see Pye, Lucien W., Aspects of Political Development (Boston, 1966).Google Scholar

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9 Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, 1966).Google Scholar On the impression made upon public bureaucracies of the values of emciency and effectiveness as a consequence of this transformation, see La Palombara, Joseph, “Values and Ideologies in the Administrative Evolution of Western Constitutional Systems,” in Braibanti, Ralph, ed., Political and Administrative Dcvelopnment (Durham, N.C., 1969), pp. 166219.Google Scholar

10 The distinguishing characteristics of these political system are that the bureaucratic institutions acquire disproportionate autonomy and the higher echelons and councils of these bureaucracies become the sole channels of political struggle. See Eisenstadt, S. N., The Political Systems of Empires (Glencoe, III., 1963), pp. 2122, 103–157.Google Scholar

11 Marx, Fritz Morstein, The Administrative State: An Introduction to Bureaucracy (Chicago, 1957),Google Scholar and Eisenstadt, S. N., “Political Struggle in Bureaucratic Societies,” World Politics, 8 (10, 1956), 2034.Google Scholar

12 This resumé draws partly upon my “Some Notes on the Assumptions of the Theory of Administrative Reform in the Ottoman-Turkish State,” M.E.T.U. Studies in Development (Ankara), 3 (Fall, 1971), particularly pp. 437–443. For a full elaboration, see my Bürokratik Yönetim Gcleneği: Osmanl Іmparatorluğunda ve Türkiye Cumhnriyetinde GeIişimi ve Nifeliği (Ankara, 1974).Google Scholar

13 For the argument that, for the most part, change in the Ottoman-Turkish State was “induced” rather than “organic,” see Sugar, Peter F., “Economic and Political Modernization: Turkey,” in Ward, Robert E. and Rustow, Dankwart A., eds., Political Modernizationt in Japan and Turkey (Princeton, N.J., 1964), pp. 146175.Google Scholar Here “induced” should be taken to mean “induced plus ardently desired and imitated.” For this last view modifying that of Sugar's, see my “Üniversitenin Іşlevleri ve Toplumsal Değişm: Kuramsal Bir Yak1şim,” Ainme Іdaresi Dergisi (Ankara), 6 (March, 1973), 43–56.Google Scholar

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15 Unless otherwise indicated, bureaucracy of the Ottoman period refers to all high-ranked oflicial groups and not just to civil bureaucracy.Google Scholar

16 Іnalcik, Halil, “The Nautre of Traditional Society: Turkey,” in Ward and Rustow, eds., Political Modcrnization in Japan and Turkey, p. 42,Google Scholar and Mardin, Şerif, “Power, Civil Society and Culture in the Ottoman Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2 (06, 1969), 258281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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18 Berkes, Niyazi, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal, 1964), pp. 9495.Google Scholar

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22 Chambers, Richard L., “The Civil Bureaucracy: Turkey,” in Ward and Rustow, eds., Political Moderniatio;, in Turkey, p. 306. These schools were further reformed and given a fresh impetus, perhaps paradoxically, during the reign of Abdülhamid II.Google Scholar See Kuran, Ercüment, “Küçük Said Paşa (1840–1914) as a Turkish Modernist,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1, 2 (1970), 127.Google Scholar

23 Mardin, şerif, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?Daedalus, 102 (Winter, 1973), 173.Google Scholar

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26 The rise of minority urban merchant groups early in the nineteenth century led to the formation of the first truly economic middle classes in the Ottoman society after the trade with the East declined and that with the West started. The emergence of the Muslim economic middle classes followed about half a century later. It was not until the transition to multiparty politics in the 1940S that these groups began to share political power with the civil and military bureaucratic elite. See Karpat, “The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789–1908,” pp. 256–257,Google Scholar and Neyzi, Nezih, “The Middle Classes in Turkey,” in Kemal H. Karpat et al., Social Change and Politics in Turkey (Leiden, 1973), p. 127,Google Scholar and Inalcik, Halil, “Capital Formation in the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Economic History, 29 (05 1969), 138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Karpat notes that ayan, even in the middle of the nineteenth century, had to obtain a berat. See his “Structural Change, Historical Stages of Modernization and the Role of Social Groups in Turkish Politics,” in ibid., p. 37. Ayan, however, obtained de facto influence during the period under consideration as, among other reasons, the tax-farming system was abolished in 1831, and the central government did not have an adequate number of trained tax-collectors.

27 Mardin, Serif, “Historical Determinants of Stratification, Social Class, and Class Consciousness in Turkey,” Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi, 22 (1967), 111142,Google Scholar and Inalcik, Halil, “Capital Formation in the Ottoman Empire,” p. 136.Google Scholar

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29 I am using these concepts as in Bendix, Reinhard, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (Garden City, N.Y., 1962).Google Scholar

30 A distinguished Turkish scholar of the development of Turkish intellectual life points to a contradiction in the Ottoman Empire between form (form) and zihniyet (mentality), and argues that whereas the Empire had a progressive administrative system, it had a “feudal mentality.” See Ülgener, Sabri, Iktisadi Inhitat Tarihimizde Aizlâk ye Zihniyet Meseleleri (Istanbul, 1951), p. 194.Google Scholar

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32 For these two aspects of modernization, see Riggs, Fred W., “Political Aspects of Developniental Change,” in Gallaher, Art Jr, ed., Perspectives in Developmental Change (Lexington, Ky., 1968), pp. 145146.Google Scholar

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34 Editorial, “Dertlerimizin Asil Kaynaği,” Forum, 18 (July 15, 1965), 1–2;Google ScholarCohn, Edwin J., Turkish Economic, Social, and Political Change: Tile Development of a More Prosperous and Open Society (New York, 1970), p. 88.Google Scholar Eisenstadt notes that in the formerly patrimonial societies, the foci of political decision and innovation are mostly in the hands of the executive branch of government as composed of bureaucracy, army, political cliques, and pressure groups. These central elites tend to monopolize central political activities and resources by attempting to limit any independent access of the periphery to such resources and activities as well as by minimizing the direct, independent political contact and participation of the periphery in the center. See his “Post-Traditional Societies and the Continuity and Reconstruction of Tradition,” p. 12. In Turkey the civil bureaucracy was consciously promoted during the 1930s. Military bureaucracy was given short shrift mostly as a reaction to the Union and Progress period, and the polity was bureaucratized both as a result of the preferences of Ismet Inönü who actually ran the government and perhaps, most significantly, as a consequence of emphasis being placed upon cultural reforms and, in general, upon nation- building problems rather than upon socioeconomic development. See Shah, Sirdar Ikbal Ali, “Controlling Minds of Modern Turkey: Four Men Who Count in Affairs,” Great Britain and the East, 55 (0106, 1941), passim;Google ScholarRustow, Dankwart A., “Atatrk as a Founder of a State,” Daedalus, 97 (Summer, 1968), 794;Google ScholarÖzbudun, Ergun, “Established Revolution vs. Unfinished Revolution: Contrasting Patterns of Democratization in Mexico and Turkey”, in Huntington, Samuel P. and Moore, Clement H., eds., Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society: Tile Dynamics of Established One-Party Systems (London, 1973), pp. 393 ff.Google Scholar

35 Kazamias, Andreas M., Education and the Quest for Modernity in Turkey (Chicago, 1966), p. 209.Google Scholar Karpat notes that during the 1950s, the professors' statement resembled the old fetva. (“Political Developments in Turkey, 1950–1970,” Middle Eastern Studies, 9 [October, 1972], 358).Google Scholar

36 Okyar, Osman, “Universities in Turkey,” Minerva, 6 (Winter, 1968), 223224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Selek, Sabahattin, Anadolu Ihtilâli (Istanbul, 1968), p. 713,Google Scholar and Turhan, Mümtaz, CarplilaSmanin Ncresindevie? (Istanbul, 1967), pp. 15, 71–72.Google Scholar

38 The new political elite has never been able to develop a counter set of ideology that could replace Kemalism. See Editorial, “Meselelerimiz ye Mânevi Hazirlik Zarureti,” Forum, 8 (December 15, 1955), p. 1.Google Scholar This seems to be a consequence of the fact that the bourgeoisie in Turkey has remained underdeveloped. It always lacked capital and depended upon and worked through the state. The basic economic unit continued to be the family firm. And, perhaps still more significantly, it has primarily involved itself in land speculation, import and export, construction—in short, in commercial activities with a view to short-run profits rather than industrial enterprises. See Neyzi, “The Middle Classes in Turkey,” pp. 143–148; Karpat, “Structural Change, Historical Stages of Modernization, and the Role of Social Groups in Turkish Politics,” 52;Google ScholarBaar, Ahmet Hamdi, “For Freedom and Private Enterprise”, in Karpat, Kemal H., ed., Political and Social Thought In the Contemporary Middle East (New York, 1968), pp. 339356;Google ScholarFindikoklu, Z.F., “Turkish Intelligentsia and Turkish Economics,” Association des Recherches Culturelles et Socioloqucs de Turquie, ser. B, No. 7 (Istanbul, 1965), passim;Google Scholar and my “The Recalcitrance of the Public Bureaucracy toward 'Bourgeois Politics’ in Turkey: A Multi-Factor Political Stratification Analysis,” The Middle East Journal (Autumn, 1976), forthcoming.Google Scholar

39 Harris, George S., “The Causes of the 1960 Revolution in Turkey,” Middle East Journal, 24 (08, 1970), 438454.Google Scholar

40 For some of the limitations that governments under military auspices recently faced, see Erim, Nihat, “The Turkish Experience in the Light of Recent Developments,” Middle East Journal, 26 (Summer, 1972), 245252. Karpat, in fact, argues that “the military revolution, although not intending to do so, destroyed the vestiges of the old order and permitted the new middle class to gain additional political and social power through a new constitutional order. Constitutionalism, parliamentarism and liberalism, that is, the traditional values of the middle class, became the political credo of the new order” (“Political Developments in Turkey, 1950–1970,” p. 360).Google Scholar

41 Full account of the findings are reported in my Bürokratik Yönetim Geleneĝi, chapter seven.Google Scholar

42 By “political attitude” I roughly refer to a general predisposition to react positively or negatively to a person, place or circumstance. By “political idea” I refer to one's judgment of a particular set of facts. Political attitude is the more stable of the two and in the long run exerts a stronger influence on one's behavior. See Kolasa, Blair J.Introduction to Behavioral Science for Business (New York, 1969), p. 386.Google Scholar For a similar distinction between political ideas and political attitudes vis-à-vis the Ottoman-Turkish elite, see Mardin, Şerif, Continuity and Change in the Ideas of Young Turks (Istanbul, 1969), p. 3.Google Scholar

43 The concept of the democratic way of life as it operated here may be taken as the political counterpart of the bureaucratic “formal rationality.” The public interest is not identified with abstract ideal values and norms or with the specific interest of a particular individual, class or majority. For these distinctions, see Huntington, Samuel, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn., 1968), p. 24.Google Scholar

44 Dodd, C. H., “The Social and Educational Backgrounds of Turkish Officials,” Middle Easteru Studies, 2 (04, 1965), 269.Google Scholar

45 Suna Kili, too, points out that political crises have overlapped in Turkey. (Turkey: A Case Study of Political Development [Istanbul, 1968]).Google Scholar

46 Later efforts in Turkey at regulating political party activities seem to be the consequence of such tendencies on the part of the intellectual-bureaucratic elite. For the law on political parties enacted after the 1960 political coup, see Dodd, C. H., Politics and Government in Turkey (Manchester, 1969), chapter nine.Google Scholar

47 Timur, Taner, Turk Devrimi: Tarihi Anlam: ye Felsefi Temeli (Ankara, 1968), pp. 103106.Google Scholar

48 Participation of the periphery in the political decision-making in transitional societies is conceptualized as “ruralizing elections” or “green uprising.” (Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, pp. 74–75, 448–460).Google Scholar Two works, inter alia, utilizing these theoretical constructs to study the socioeconomic and political transformations in Turkey of the last two decades are Roos, Leslie L. and Roos, Noralou P., Managers of Modernization: Organizations and Elites in Tnrkey, 1950–1969 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971),CrossRefGoogle Scholar chapter nine, and Tachau, Frank, “The Anatomy of Political and Social Change: Turkish Parties, Parliaments, and Elections,” Comparative Politics, (07, 1973), 551573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Cohn, Edwin J., Turkish Economic, Social, and Political Change: The Development of a More Prosperous and Open Society (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

50 Dodd, Politics and Government in Turkey, chapter eight.Google Scholar

51 Roos and Roos, Managers of Modernization: Organizations and Elites in Turkey (1950–1969), chapter nine. This phenomenon is, of course, not limited to Turkey. See Pye, Aspects of Political Development, pp. 172–587.Google Scholar

52 Simpson, Dwight, “Development as a Process: The Menderes Phase in Turkey”, Middle East Journal, 19, (Spring, 1965), 541552.Google Scholar See also Alexander, Alec P., “Industrial Entrepreneurship in Turkey: Origins and Growth,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 8 (1960), 349365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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54 Karpat, Kemal H., “Ideology in Turkey after the Revolution of 1960,” in Karpat, et al., Social Change and Politics in Turkey, p. 358. Âmiran Kurtkan writing in 1962, however, points to the lack of group consciousness among the Turkish bourgeoisie. (“Turkiye'de Içtimai Siniflar,” 1960–1961 Ders Yth Sosyoloji Konferanslari [Istanbul, 1962]).Google Scholar

55 Roos and Roos, Managers of Modernization, chapter nine.Google Scholar

56 On these concepts, see Marx, Fritz M., “The Higher Civil Service as an Action Group in Western Political Development,” in La Palombara, Joseph, ed., Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton, N.J., 1963), pp. 6295.Google Scholar

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58 Szyliowicz, Joseph S., “Elite Recruitment in Turkey: The Role of Mulkiye,” World Politics, 23 (04, 1971), 396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 Tutum, Cahit, Türkiye'de Memur Güveuliği (Ankara, 1972), pp. 95100.Google Scholar

60 Bent, Frederick T., “The Turkish Bureaucracy as an Agent of Change,” Journal of Comparative Administration, 1 (05, 1969), 4764.CrossRefGoogle Scholar