Evolution of economic thought in the Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey

Abstract

Up until the late eighteenth century, the economic understanding of the Ottoman elite was based on the worldview of the scholars of the Madrasah system. The first Ottoman treatises in modern economics began to be written in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, close to 300 years after the emergence of the subject during the Mercantilist era. The nineteenth century witnessed a gradual increase in economic analyses, together with the introduction of the subject in various institutions of higher education. However, a breakthrough in the development of economic thinking in the country had to wait until the foundation of the Republic in 1923, the emergence of the journal Kadro and the establishment of Istanbul University a decade later. This article traces the emergence and development of economics in the Ottoman Empire and in the first decade and a half of the Turkish Republic.