DISCUSSIONS ON SA’Y U AMEL IN THE OTTOMAN PRESS

Abstract

The Ottoman intellectuals began to follow developments in the West as they recognized that the Ottoman state in the 19th century has fallen economically against Western states and they are proceeded to identify the main reasons behind the economic development of European states. Intellectuals observed that in the West the people conducted in private enterprise activities by acting on the idea of personal enterprise and working psychology played an important role in all sectors of economy. For this reason, they tried to overcome the idea of private enterprise to Ottoman people. In this direction, they thought that the economic troubles in the country would be removed and production will increase from the standpoint of the people turning to private enterprise. The intellectuals benefited from the newspapers to reach out to the public and to educate them and for this reason they received many articles in order to inform the people in the periodicals and to give them modern ideas. The intellectuals have received many articles in the press of the period on the subject of this study. With these letters, it is desired to increase the interest of the people to entrepreneurship and it has been stated that the people should work in the direction of the private enterprise. It has also been expressed that people should give importance to scientific studies besides economic effort and also mentioned that today’s modern technologies are the result of these studies. They also wanted to strengthen the scientific accumulation of the people for the development of the Ottoman state and the improvement of technology in the country. In this study, the articles of private enterprise seen in the Ottoman Press were determined and the content analysis of the published works was made.