Building state capacity: The uneven territorial reach of the Turkish state during the republican ERA|

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2578315 _(Table of contents)

This thesis examines the process of building Turkish state capacity in the early period of the Turkish Republic. This thesis regards the territorial reach of the state in order to control and regulate civil society as the prerequisite for building state capacity. The literature on state and state capacity emphasizes the necessity of continuous protection of territorial political power through penetration of the state institutions and state personnel into civil society to perpetuate the existence of political power and state. In this sense, the state has to radiate its own institutions and personnel from the center to the periphery. This effort constitutes the process of the territorial reach of the state. However, as the literature indicates, due to the existence of challengers to the state in the territory, the state does not evenly reach the territory. Based on these arguments, this thesis focuses on the process of the territorial reach of the Turkish state through two state institutions, namely Umumi Müfettislik (the Inspectorates-General) and Halkevleri (People’s Houses), in order to build the state capacity. However, due to the existence of territorial and organizational challengers in the territory, the Republican elites had unevenly established these state institutions in the territory. They preferred to establish Umumi Müfettislik in mainly eastern provinces where territorial challengers existed while opening Halkevleri in mainly western provinces where organizational challengers lived. In addition to the qualitative method that I use to construct causal mechanisms between challengers and the decision of the Republican elites, I employ the quantitative method to present empirical analysis on the causal mechanisms based on the dataset that I collected from various studies and archives. Moving from qualitative and quantitative evidence, I conclude that the Republican elites took the location of challengers into consideration while deciding to establish these state institutions. This selection procedure resulted in the uneven territorial reach of the Turkish state. As a result, I conclude that the Republican elites built unequal state capacity in the territory because of the uneven territorial reach of the Turkish state.