Abstract
This article examines the causes and outcomes of two university reforms during the single-party era in Turkey (1923–1946), focusing on the implications of the reforms in terms of higher education governance models—the state-control and academic self-governance—that are ultimately characterized by the balance between the type and degree of central control and university autonomy. The paper argues that the degree of ideational controversy and institutional strength in the given policy field considerably affected the reform processes and outcomes, reconciling historical institutionalist assumptions with ideational institutional approaches. The process-tracing analysis shows that the university reform of 1933 was mainly triggered by the ideological and political dissidence between some of the academic staff and the ruling and intellectual elite who wanted to heavily control the university and ended up with the transition to a heavy state-control regime. The principal driving force behind the 1946 reform was to adapt the country to the changing external political conditions after the end of WWII, aiming to lend a democratic face to the regime, which, in combination with other factors such as the growing opposition from academic circles, led to the institutionalization of academic self-governance model.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
This was the first Ottoman university established after several attempts during the nineteenth century (see, İhsanoğlu, 2019). Thus, the university, as an organizational form, was a latecomer to Turkish higher education, implanted into the system that had been dominated by two sets of institutions: madrasas that have their roots in the eleventh century and professional academies that have started to be founded in the mid-eighteenth century onwards. This institution, rebranded as the Istanbul University in 1933, was the only university until 1944. For that reason, the article directly focuses on it.
I use the term radical to refer to both the abrupt character of change and the implications of it so that it encapsulates both temporality and substantiality. Exogenous explanations posit that institutions change through interaction with the environment or simply the external world that shakes the institutional order and stability mostly through sudden and large-scale events (e.g., wars, financial crises, or moments of socio-political instability). Endogenous accounts point out how processes taking place within institutions due to the relations between embedded actors produce either moderate or substantial change. Note that Table 1 is produced for heuristic purposes to present only the most expected/ideal-typical possibilities when the two dimensions—institutional strength and ideational controversy—are combined in different ways.
By mechanism, I parsimoniously refer to processes in which actors and entities engage to bring about change from a scientific realist position (Bunge, 1997).
This was an official pseudoscientific study of Turkish history, focusing on the ancient historical, linguistic, and ethnic origins of the Turks. It was seen crucial in building the secular Turkish identity and re-shaping its collective memory.
Reşit Galip even drew an analogy between the Byzantine scholars who left the country after the conquest of Constantinople and the Jewish scholars who fled Germany after the Nazis came to power (Schwartz, 1995). Just as Byzantine scholars contributed to the emergence of the Renaissance in Europe, German scholars could have initiated a Turkish Renaissance. Another historical irony was that émigré scholars, who could be regarded as the very victims of Western modernity and progress from their own perspective, were seen by the Turkish side as the very agents of Western modernity, who would help Turkish reformers in implementing their civilizational transformation project aiming at reconfiguring the institutional and cultural spheres.
This argument does not necessarily rule out the importance of internal factors. It is known that some members of the ruling party saw gradual democratization and liberalization necessary to relax the authoritarian control on society and give room to the emerging opposition in the civil society and among the business actors who were critical of statist policies (see, VanderLippe, 2005).
References
Agasisti, T. and Catalano, G. (2006) Governance models of university systems—towards quasi-markets? Tendencies and perspectives: A European comparison. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 28(3): 245–262
Ahmad, F. (2002) The Making of Modern Turkey, London: Routledge.
Ansell, B.W. (2008) University challenges: Explaining institutional change in higher education. World Politics 60(2): 189–230
Asaf, B. (1932a) Arkada kalan Darülfünun. Kadro 8(August): 47–48
Asaf, B. (1932b) Fırka mektebi. Kadro 9(September): 30–33
Asaf, B. (1933) Üniversitenin manası. Kadro 20(August): 24–28
Aydemir, ŞS. (1933) Darülfünun inkılâp hassasiyeti ve Cavit Bey iktisatçılığı. Kadro 14(February): 5–11
Aydemir, ŞS. (1934) İnkılâp kürsülerinde inkılâp kürsüleşmelidir. Kadro 28(April): 5–13
Beach, D. and Pedersen, R.B. (2019) Process-tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Becher, T. and Kogan, M. (1992) Process and Structure in Higher Education, London: Routledge.
Bengtsson, B. and Ruonavaara, H. (2017) Comparative process tracing: Making historical comparison structured and focused. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47(1): 44–66
Bentwich, N. (1953) The Rescue and Achievement of Refugee Scholars: The Story of Displaced Scholars and Scientists, 1933–1952, Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Bleiklie, I. and Kogan, M. (2007) Organization and governance of universities. Higher Education Policy 20(4): 477–493
Braun, D. (1999) Changing governance models in higher education: The case of the new managerialism. Swiss Political Science Review 5(3): 1–24
Bunge, M. (1997) Mechanism and explanation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 27(4): 410–465
Burk, L.A. (2005) 'An Open Door: German Refugee Professors in Turkey', in P.I. Rose (ed.) The Dispossessed: An Anatomy of ExileAmherst: University of Massachusetts Press, pp. 235–257.
Cantwell, B. (2020) Explanatory accounts in international and comparative higher education research. Higher Education Quarterly 74(2): 149–161
Capoccia, G. (2016) When do institutions “bite”? Historical institutionalism and the politics of institutional change. Comparative Political Studies 49(8): 1095–1127
Carstensen, M.B. and Schmidt, V.A. (2016) ‘Power through, over and in ideas: Conceptualizing ideational power in discursive institutionalism. Journal of European Public Policy 23(3): 318–337
Clark, B.R. (1983) The Higher Education System: Academic Organization in Cross-national Perspective, Berkeley: University of California Press.
De Boer, H., Enders, J. and Schimank, U. (2007) 'On the way towards new public management? The governance of university systems in England, the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany', in D. Jansen (ed.) New forms of Governance in Research OrganizationsDordrecht: Springer, pp. 137–152.
Dobbins, M., Knill, C. and Vögtle, E.M. (2011) An analytical framework for the cross-country comparison of higher education governance. Higher Education 62(5): 665–683
Dölen, E. (2010) Türkiye Üniversite Tarihi 2: Cumhuriyet Döneminde Osmanlı Darülfünunu. İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları.
Ergin, M. (2009) Cultural encounters in the social sciences and humanities: Western émigré scholars in Turkey. History of the Human Sciences 22(1): 105–130
Ferlie, E., Musselin, C. and Andresani, G. (2008) The steering of higher education systems: A public management perspective. Higher Education 56(3): 325
Fındıklı, B. (2020) A republic of scholars or scholars of the republic? Reflections on the predicaments of academic freedom and University Autonomy in Turkey. Higher Education Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12287
Gerring, J. (2007) Case Study Research: Principles and Practices, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hall, P. A. (1986) Governing the Economy: The politics of state intervention in Britain and France. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Hirsch, E. E. (1998) Dünya Üniversiteleri ve Türkiye'de Üniversitelerin Gelişmesi. Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Yayınları.
Ihrig, S. (2014) Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Immergut, E.M. (1992) Health politics: Interests and Institutions in Western Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
İhsanoğlu, E. (2019) The House of Sciences: The First Modern University in the Muslim World, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jungblut, J. (2015) Bringing political parties into the picture: A two-dimensional analytical framework for higher education policy. Higher Education 69(5): 867–882
Karpat, K. (1991) 'The Republican People’s Party, 1923–1945', in M. Heper and J. Landau (eds.) Political Parties and Democracy in TurkeyLondon: I.B. Tauris, pp. 42–64.
Kazamias, A.M. (1966) Education and the Quest for Modernity in Turkey, London: George Allen and Unwin.
Levitsky, S. and Murillo, M.V. (2009) Variation in institutional strength. Annual Review of Political Science 12: 115–133
Mahoney, J. and Thelen, K. (2010) 'A theory of gradual institutional change', in J. Mahoney and K. Thelen (eds.) Explaining Institutional change: Ambiguity, Agency, and PowerCambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–37.
Malche, A. [1932] (1939) İstanbul Üniversitesi Hakkında Rapor. İstanbul: Devlet Basımevi.
Mazıcı, N. (1995) Öncesi ve sonrasıyla 1933 üniversite reformu. Birikim 76(August): 56–70
Olsen, J.P. (2007) 'The institutional dynamics of the European university', in P. Maassen and J.P. Olsen (eds.) University Dynamics and European IntegrationDordrecht: Springer, pp. 25–54.
Onoma, A.K. (2009) 'The contradictory potential of institutions', in J. Mahoney and K. Thelen (eds.) Explaining Institutional change: Ambiguity, Agency, and PowerCambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 63–93.
Öncü, A. (1993) 'Academics: The West in the Discourse of University Reform', in M. Heper, A. Öncü and H. Kramer (eds.) Turkey and the West: Changing Political and Cultural IdentitiesLondon: I. B. Tauris, pp. 142–176.
Pierson, P. (2000) Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics. American Political Science Review 94(2): 251–267
Reisman, A. (2007) Jewish refugees from Nazism, Albert Einstein, and the modernization of higher education in Turkey (1933–1945). Aleph 7: 253–281
Schmidt, V.A. (2008) Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse. Annual Review of Political Science 11: 303–326
Schwartz, P. (1995) Notgemeinschaft: Zur Emigration deutscher Wissenschaftler nach 1933 in die Türkei, Marburg: Metropolis-Verlag.
Shaw, S.J. (1993) Turkey and the Holocaust: Turkey’s Role in Rescuing Turkish and European Jewry from Nazi Persecution, 1933–1945, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Streeck, W. and Thelen, K. (eds.) (2005) Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thelen, K. (2004) How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tomenendal, K., Özdemir, F.D. and Mercan, F.O. (2010) German-speaking academic émigrés in Turkey of the 1940s. Österreichische Zeitschrift Für Geschichtswissenschaften 21(3): 69–99
Tunçay, M. and Özen, H. (1984) 1933 Darülfünun Tasfiyesi veya Bir Tek-parti Politikacısının Önlenemez Yükselişi ve Düşüşü. Tarih Ve Toplum 10: 222–236
VanderLippe, J.M. (2005) The Politics of Turkish Democracy: İsmet İnönü and the Formation of the Multi-Party System, 1938–1950, Albany: SUNY Press.
van Vught, F.A. (1993) Patterns of Governance in Higher education: Concepts and Trends, Paris: UNESCO.
Widmann, H. (1973) Exil und Bildungshilfe: Die deutschsprachige akademische Emigration in die Türkei nach 1933, Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Zürcher, E.J. (2004) Turkey: A Modern History, London: IB Tauris.
Funding
The author received no specific funding for this work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fındıklı, B. Between Autonomy and Central Control: A Tale of Two University Reforms in Turkey During the Single-Party Era. High Educ Policy 35, 855–872 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-021-00236-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-021-00236-y