GEÇ OSMANLI İKTİSADİ DÜŞÜNCESİ: MİLLİ İKTİSADIN ENTELEKTÜEL TEMELLERİ VE ERKEN CUMHURİYET DÖNEMİNE YANSIMALARI

This thesis examines the emergence, theoretical foundations, and historical implementation of the concept of the national economy in the late Ottoman Empire and its continuity in the early Republican era between 1908 and 1929. In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman economy became increasingly integrated into global capitalism through liberal trade doctrines, capitulations, and foreign financial control, which generated structural dependency and limited economic sovereignty. In response, Ottoman intellectuals developed the national economy as an alternative development doctrine inspired primarily by Friedrich List and the German Historical School, rejecting the universal validity of free trade and emphasizing protectionism, state intervention, and the construction of national productive forces. Challenging the dominant literature that treats the national economy as two separate phases—1908 1918 and 1923–1929—or merely as a precursor to Republican statism, this study conceptualizes it as a continuous, yet internally contested project shaped by both intellectual ambition and institutional constraints. Methodologically, the thesis combines an analysis of economic policies and institutional practices with a close reading of primary economic texts written by six key thinkers: Akyiğitzade Musa, Parvus Efendi, Tekin Alp, Ziya Gökalp, Yusuf Akçura, and Ahmet Hamdi Başar. The analysis focuses on six thematic areas: the role of the state and institutional architecture, capital accumulation and finance, agriculture, industry, infrastructure and domestic market integration, and foreign trade. The findings demonstrate that while the national economy constituted a coherent and systematic development program at the theoretical level, its practical implementation remained partial due to limited capital accumulation, persistent external dependency, and class-based structural constraints. This study argues that national economy should be understood not merely as an ideological discourse but as a historically grounded attempt to reconcile economic independence with capitalist development under conditions of late industrialization.