Begüm Adalet. Hotels and Highways: The Construction of Modernization Theory in Cold War Turkey. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018. 304 pp. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5036-0429-2; $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-5036-0554-1.
Reviewed by Husik Ghulyan (Independent Scholar)
Published on H-Socialisms (June, 2019)
Commissioned by Gary Roth (Rutgers University - Newark)
Mirrors of Capitalist Modernization in Turkey
Between 1945 and 1950, Turkey experienced a substantial transformation, whereby liberal economic policies replaced the previously dominant protectionist-statist industrialization policies that had existed since the 1930s. At the same time, Turkey’s political regime evolved into a multiparty regime, with increased participation at all levels of society in political and civic life.[1] These changes pointed to immense changes in the social, political, and economic life of the country. The most critical change was the victory of the Democrat Party in the 1950 general elections, which by “any measure constituted a fundamental break in Turkish history.”[2]
The Democrat Party was the representative of the dominant classes in agriculture and trade, and it focused on reconfiguring and reshaping Turkey’s capitalism in line with agricultural priorities. The establishment of an agrarian capitalism was key not only to developments in the economy but also in the political, ideological, and cultural domains of the country.[3] The establishment of an agrarian capitalist regime was also the product of the place that the world system assigned to the economy of Turkey. Ever since the end of the 1940s, agriculture had been undergoing mechanization through the Marshall Plan, while US aid agencies had fostered highway construction policies. Both agricultural mechanization and highway construction were in line with capitalist modernization attempts; these aimed at integrating Turkey into the global space of capitalism and assigning specific functions to the economy, thus extending and reproducing the spaces of the global capitalist order. During the earlier republican era (1923-45), railway construction was one of the major steps in the creation of an integrated national market and spatialization of the state’s authority.[4] Under the rule of the Democrat Party, the US-aided highway construction program and agricultural mechanization were yet additional steps in the integration of the national market, the establishment of the market-oriented national economy, and a versatile integration of the nation-state space—all of which engendered political, ideological, and sociocultural controversies.
Begüm Adalet’s Hotels and Highways: The Construction of Modernization Theory in Cold War Turkey develops its narrative with this background, and aims to explore the emergence of modernization theory and developmental thought and their Turkish archetype after the Second World War. The major focus of Hotels and Highways is the examination of Turkey “as both the template on which modernization theory was based and the object on which it was enacted” (p. 3). The manufacturing of this theory was based on the production of architectural and infrastructural spaces, functioning as laboratories both for testing the assumptions of modernization theory and initiating the creation of modern subjectivities. For modernization theory of the Cold War era, the primary indices of development were the capacity for empathy, mobility, and hospitality. In the case of Turkey—as a laboratory for modernization theory—survey research, highways, and tourism landmarks appeared as the most crucial sites of theory construction and enacting modern subjects. Hotels and Highways is based upon the elaboration of these three sites of theory construction and modernization enactment: survey research to measure modernization and enact it, highway construction to create an integrated national market and foster mobility among citizens, and tourism landmarks to root hospitality as another most pertinent feature of modern subjects. The structure of Hotels and Highways is framed on a detailed examination of each of these cases.
Chapter 1 takes on the emergence of modernization theory in Turkey during the Cold War and focuses particularly on the case of political scientist and Middle East specialist Dankwart Rustow’s participation in Turkey’s portrayal as a showcase in academic and policy circles. Here, Adalet tries to uncover Rustow’s role as “an uncertain translator between Turkish and American social scientists” (p. 26) and his role in “forging transnational circuits of knowledge on both sides of the Atlantic” (p. 31). He was one of those Cold Warriors engaged in both the process of knowledge production pertaining to modernization theory and the diffusion of that knowledge to foreign locales. Adalet focuses on Turkey’s treatment as a laboratory and its representation as a model to its Middle Eastern neighbors. According to such an approach to Turkey’s landscape, the country was conceived as a prototype of modernization, a representation on a smaller scale, which, in an unspecified time in the future, would become a modern country. Through multiple stages of abstraction, Turkey’s history and landscape appeared as “raw data” for the crafting of modernization theory, which then would be repackaged and re-exported to the rest of the Middle East (p. 43). Although proponents of modernization theory considered Turkey as a singular case with its specific legacy of modernization in the late Ottoman period and the early republican era, its case implied problematic replication elsewhere; notwithstanding the critical assessments from both scholars and policymakers, Turkey was still treated as a template and laboratory for crafting and testing modernization initiatives in order to replicate them in the region.
Rustow’s crucial asset in this endeavor was his familiarity with the case of Turkey, which enabled him to contribute to the construction of the theory. According to Adalet, Rustow is often considered as one of the founders of modernization thought, and in recent intellectual histories of modernization theory, “Rustow is either relegated to the background or depicted as an unswerving Cold Warrior because of his involvement with the Council on Foreign Relations” (p. 31). But, as Adalet masterfully documents through archival work and analysis, Rustow’s engagement in this endeavor of knowledge production contained instances of doubt and hesitation. Some aspects of Rustow’s writings show his fluctuations between contesting visions of modernization. Rustow initially appeared as a proponent of “taming the beast of politics with the power of reason” (p. 34). Through his interactions with both sides of Atlantic, he later became “skeptical of the universalistic claims of modernization theory” and evolved from a proponent of positivism into its critic, starting to raise objections to “the validity of laboratory aspirations within the social sciences” (p. 51).
Based on the detailed analysis of Rustow’s case as intermediary between Turkish and American social scientists in knowledge production and dissemination, Adalet shows that Rustow’s fluctuations between “wholesale complicity with universalistic social science and a self-reflexive condemnation of its use in the service of ‘the wealthy and the powerful’” reflects tensions pertaining to the intertwined problems of knowledge production and the problems of the political order (p. 53). Rustow’s case and the whole of chapter 1 show that modernization theory was not a simple political endeavor designed in the United States and applied to the Third World; it was also an intellectual activity involving contentious dialogue, and instances of doubt were central to the construction of the theory.
Chapter 2 focuses on the role of survey research, funded by organizations such as the Mutual Security Agency, Turkish State Planning Organization, Ford Foundation, and Voice of America, and the work of sociologist Daniel Lerner in Turkey. Survey research was intended to routinize modernization theory by creating certain kinds of social interactions between the survey researchers and respondents; interviewees would transport themselves out of the “traditional” environment and be placed instead into the modern, sterile, and “impersonal” setting of the interview (p. 66). This would occasion forms of subjectivity and interpersonal relations proper to modern society, generating modern subjectivities capable of empathy, considered as one of the basic traits of modern subjectivity. At the same time, survey research was conducted among peasants, students, and administrators, attempting to measure levels of modernization across Turkey.
It is in this context that Adalet discusses the role of Daniel Lerner, who shared Gabriel Almond’s credo that “attitudinal research would help generate a universally applicable, scientifically sound model of modernization” (p. 62). In his theory of modernization, Lerner conceived of respondent behavior itself as a decisive signifier of modernity; the pillar of his understanding of modernization was the subjects’ ability to imagine themselves outside the self, defined through an empathy index. In this regard, Lerner thought that “failure to abide by the interactional prerequisites of the survey indicated an inability to partake of the modern or empathetic mindset” (p. 65). Such a conception of modern subjects as capable of empathy meant that “the surveys were conducted not merely to measure or describe but also to occasion the performance of the very categories—modern, transitional, and traditional—that they sought to explain” (p. 65).
During the 1950s and 1960s, large-scale sample surveys were conducted in Turkey, employing Lerner’s procedures and categories of modern, transitional, and traditional. Researchers such as Nermin Abadan, Arif Payaslıoğlu, Herbert Hyman, and others not only adapted Lerner’s categories but also introduced modifications to some of his formulations, thus contributing to the popularization of survey research in Turkey. But despite the popularity of survey research and its prevalence in social science research and policy considerations, it was not immune to growing skepticism towards it, epistemic challenges, and problems arising in Turkey’s setting. As Adalet shows, respondents challenged the meanings and contexts presupposed by the interviewers. Indeed, Adalet’s stupendous archival work reveals that in the questionnaires used in Turkey, there were responses that did not find their reflections in respective publications. Those responses were refusals to engage with the survey questions, which “disqualified the respondents from being categorized as modern subjects, capable of empathy in general and of conversing with the interviewer in a proper manner in particular” (p. 68). Such refusals were due to respondents’ realistic assessment of their standing or interests in life, rather than due to their lack of capacity for imagination and empathy.
Indeed, the researchers erased the respondents’ manipulations of interactional frames, thus contributing to “the crystallization of survey research as both a tool and an indicator of modernization across its sites of implementation” (p. 57); or those respondents not elaborating their views in the interview setting were presumed to not have any opinions at all. Openness to the survey settings, an ability and willingness to identify with hypothetical situations, a capacity for psychic and physical mobility, and hospitality to the interviewer were all considered as evidence of modern subjects and raw data to measure modernization. According to Adalet, “there was not a wholesale acceptance of the premises and dictates of those practices, and they were not imbued with the ability to cultivate new subjectivities for their recipients” (p. 83).
Chapters 3 and 4 of Hotels and Highways takes to the US-planned and -funded highway construction projects in Turkey and the technological and expertise transfer between the two countries. These two chapters are very closely related and uncover the modernizers’ attempts to master space and time and extend the global space of capitalism to the entire national space of Turkey. To me, these two chapters are the most entertaining part of the book as well as the most salient to modernization theory, and indeed, raise issues that lie at the core of the (re)production of capitalist modernity.
The aim of US aid and expertise- and machinery-transfer through the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan was to initiate modernization in terms of aiding rational methods of record-keeping, roadbuilding, and machine maintenance. At the same time, technology transfer was an important part of Turkey’s status as a showcase, in terms of constructing state-sponsored infrastructural networks and deepening capitalist relationships. Those transfers and aid, as Adalet shows, also attempted to implant additional traits of modern subjectivity among Turkish engineers, planners, and administrators. This was done by upgrading their habits and temporal outlook, from a dominant cyclical-time approach, and an impatient and “non-pedantic” outlook, to a linear-time approach, and patience about the immediate future; thus, through their engagement with reports, maps, highway equipment, and roads, local experts would master concepts like foresight, expenditure, saving, and management. The circulation of machinery was also aimed at presenting and propagating alternative models of development, namely the capitalist one, thus “a wide range of material objects, such as machines, paper-work, and maps were concrete channels through which ideas about modernization and expertise traversed and crystallized” (p. 98).
Another fascinating aspect of chapters 3 and 4 is Adalet’s take on various cartographic and discursive practices of the period in the context of highway construction. These aimed at dissecting Turkey’s national space for administrative and productive proposes, practices dominated by depictions of the “backwardness” of some of Turkey’s regions, especially Kurdish-populated ones in southeastern Turkey. While the delivery of “civilization” to those regions was considered an urgent need (p. 125), such depictions also carefully framed the Kurdish question under the title of “regional backwardness,” instead of treating it in terms of ethnic and political difference (p. 142). Moreover, such an approach fitted the Turkish state’s longstanding approach to the Kurdish issue in terms of a militarized Turkification project. In this context, highway construction was another attempt to dominate these territories through possession, categorization, and regulation (p. 133) and “making order out of chaos and modernity out of wilderness” (p. 135).
Highway projects and technology transfer were also aimed at wider populations within Turkey’s rural and “peripheral” regions, since modernization facilitated the circulation of bodies, goods, and ideas and thus occasioned the production of knowledge (p. 123). In chapter 4, Adalet masterfully uncovers modernization’s discursive and practical aspects. It was believed that roads would induce attitudinal changes in the masses and instill new spatial experiences and dispositions among them. Due to their difference from railroads, roads were expected to change the social and sensory world of the population, facilitate intimate encounters, create the individual consumer, and instill the habits and mind-set of mobile modernity among them, thus producing the subject of a new political economy based on agrarian capitalism. While technology transfer (e.g., providing trucks to villagers) appeared as a means of economic unification, the bus became a means of social and cultural unification, providing opportunities for spare-time activities outside the village due to a decline in travel time and cost. Creating such mobile conditions and sociocultural unification was important in terms of inducing empathy among people, because only the mobile person would be able to anticipate and understand another’s needs and wishes. The production of capitalist modernity also meant that the rural population was more closely integrated into the economy by means of orderly bus schedules and punctual delivery times for trucks.
As described in chapters 3 and 4, both highway construction and technology transfer involved various contradictions during their implementation, with unexpected societal consequences and unforeseen usages. Namely, there were national debates questioning the extensive American involvement in the highway initiative, or elaborations by Americans on intentional and planned sabotage of the highway program within Turkey’s bureaucratic establishments. While machinery was considered important in the temporal reorientation of Turkish civil engineers and the creation of linear thinking to prevent waste and unnecessary expenditures, there were many cases of engineers mistreating machinery and thereby disrupting those modernization attempts. In societal terms, highway construction resulted in a massive flow of the rural population to cities, which in less than two decades after the start of the highway initiative and technology transfer programs, became “sites of leftist mobilization and fascist backlash” (p. 157).
In the final chapter of Hotels and Highways, Adalet takes on the Istanbul Hilton Hotel, erected as a “simultaneous expression of and blueprint for Turkish hospitality” (p. 161). At the cultural front of the Cold War, it appeared as a part of American cultural diplomacy and propaganda and was the reflection of “the vision of geopolitics-as-hospitality” (p. 170). Through its architectural style, arrangements, and American amenities, the hotel was presented as a conceived space, producing new ideals of leisure and consumption pertinent to a hospitable mind-set; like other Hilton hotels, it was intended both to showcase “American modernity against the dangers of Communism” and “to disseminate the dictates of the tourism industry” (p. 171). At the same time, on the Turkish side, the construction of the hotel fit the vision of tourism as a civilizational cause and matter of national honor, and attempts to create a national hotel industry; it would be more than a commercial enterprise and would help to consolidate national mobility and political and cultural unity.
The Istanbul Hilton also involved substantial tensions, contradictions, hesitations, and doubts. The Turkish architects protested against the project, and there were local debates on the desirability of the American conception of hospitality and the meaning and desirability of foreigners. There were also debates on the shortcomings of the tourism industry as it related to people from rural backgrounds who lacked proper manners and hygienic habits, debates which “concealed the darker underside of the republic’s history of intolerance for lifestyles it deemed to be foreign” (p. 188). Thus, according to Adalet, the Istanbul Hilton—as a mirror of diplomacy, modernity, and hospitality with its multiple meanings—appeared as a site of contestation and reconciliation, an “innkeeper of peace” against the “the perilous march of Communism” and a turning point in the development of Turkey’s tourist industry, while at the same time a representational space of Turkey’s long history of dispossession, especially that of minorities (p. 191).
Adalet’s Hotels and Highways is an important work, uncovering how modernization theory was constructed in the Cold War era and Turkey’s role in its construction and enactment. One of the most valuable aspects of the book is Adalet’s intensive archival fieldwork, with important insights derived from archival documents, memories, and memos. At first sight, Hotels and Highways appears to be a work of architectural history, urban studies, and infrastructural geography. But it goes beyond strict disciplinary fields, presenting important insights from the perspective of political science. The book serves as a valuable resource.
The body of literature focusing on Turkey’s infrastructural modernization in the Cold War era is large, especially in Turkish,[5] but what makes Hotels and Highways an outstanding work is its critical take on the topic and its focus on knowledge production through the perspective of science and technology studies. Adalet uncovers how modernization unfolded in Turkey, with all the attendant tension, hesitation, and anxiety. Adalet’s elaborate discussion of the encounters through which these tensions and anxieties unfolded and how scholarly and technocratic certitude was undercut by these issues, is highly insightful and entertaining. The book is also important in terms of showing that the Cold War modernization of Turkey was not imposed in a uniform and unidirectional way, but involved substantial contention and dissent.
The depiction of development experts and their interventions as conceited and self-assured does not hold in the case of Turkey, since there were fragilities and anxieties in expert thinking and practice. Hotels and Highways is also important in terms of providing insights into the hierarchical, colonial, and exclusionary nature of Turkey’s Cold War modernization processes, especially in the context of the Kurdish question in Turkey. This I find important, not only because Adalet, within the scope of the cases analyzed, draws attention to issues that have not been greatly elaborated and uncovered by the respective literature of infrastructural modernization in Turkey, but also since the same approach to the question still endures both in discourse and practice.
Infrastructural development and urban renewal are still propagated from the highest levels as the cure for the enduring Kurdish question in Turkey—similar to the dominant approach of the Cold War era uncovered by Adalet. In practice, entire neighborhoods in the major Kurdish-populated urban areas in Turkey are currently undergoing urban renewal in the aftermath of their destruction by security forces during 2015-16. Thus, the Cold War era motto of Turkey’s General Directorate of Highways: “It’s not yours if you can’t get there”—indeed, one of the chapter headlines of Hotels and Highways and one of its core threads—while resonating with military thinking that an area is not under control if its infantry has not yet walked through it, still appears as the dominant approach to the problem under discussion.
Although the Turkish state was able to get there long ago, either through infrastructural development or, more recently, through artillery and infantry, the same issues still exist, since the Kurdish question is still treated either as a problem of underdevelopment or as one to be solved through “getting there” by various means. In this context, Hotels and Highways resonates with recent developments and goes beyond a strictly historical analysis of the topic, with relevance for our times as well.
The final aspect of the book which makes it an engaging and relevant read is that Adalet, although incidentally, draws important conclusions and parallels with both modern Turkey and the surrounding region. The Cold War era treated Turkey as an exception, a model of modernization and laboratory of modernization attempts. Turkey’s modernization was seen as a replicable case for other Middle Eastern countries. Turkey started to be treated in a new fashion during the early 2000s, when the Justice and Development Party (JDP) came to power in Turkey. In the 2000s, the treatment of the JDP as a moderate Islamist party, and the promotion of Turkey as an exemplary and replicable case for other countries of the region, appeared to have some parallels with the earlier attempts. For the larger region, the book is of import for providing insights into modernization theory and developmental thought, showing that contemporary international developments, particularly democracy promotion and reconstruction projects in the region, are based on the premises of this line of thought.
Notes
[1]. See, for example, Çağlar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (London: Verso, 1987); and Ateş Uslu, “‘Hür’ Dünyanın Saflarında” [In the ranks of the “free” world], in Osmanlı’dan Günümüze Türkiye’de Siyasal Hayat [Political life in Turkey from the Ottoman Empire to the present], ed. Gökhan Atılgan, Cenk Saraçoğlu, and Ateş Uslu (İstanbul: Yordam Kitap, 2015), 341–86.
[2]. Keyder, State and Class in Turkey, 124.
[3]. Gökhan Atılgan, “Tarımsal Kapitalizmin Sancağı Altında” [Under the banner of agrarian capitalism], in Osmanlı’dan Günümüze Türkiye’de Siyasal Hayat, 391.
[4]. Filiz Çolak, “Atatürk Dönemi’nde Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin Ulaşım Politikasına Genel Bir Bakış (A General Overview of the Transportation Policy of the Turkish Republic in the Atatürk Era),” Turkish Studies 8, no. 2 (2013): 345–64.
[5]. See, for example, İlhan Tekeli and Selim İlkin, Cumhuriyetin Harcı: Modernitenin Altyapısı Oluşuken [The plaster of the republic: Forming the infrastructure of the modern], 2nd ed. (Istanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2010).
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Citation:
Husik Ghulyan. Review of Adalet, Begüm, Hotels and Highways: The Construction of Modernization Theory in Cold War Turkey.
H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews.
June, 2019.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53688
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