Local Politics and State-Society Relations: State Officials, Local Elites, and Political Networks in Provincial Urban Centres in the 1930s and 1940s in Turkey

Abstract

The historiography of Turkey has until recently exhibited a solid state bias in the study of the formative years of the republic. Conversely, the intersection of the state with local power networks has been understudied. This paper studies the dynamics of local political networks as exemplified in the case study of Esat Adil Müstecaplıoğlu, an exceptional case of a local political broker with leftist leanings in a provincial urban setting in the 1930s. Focusing on a local feud he was involved in and its aftermath, the article studies the dynamic relations, simultaneously conciliatory and conflictual, between local power brokers and state elites within local politics; how networks of patronage operated and shaped the relation between state and society. In doing so, the article explores the state’s infrastructural limits to operate without the cooperation of local power brokers and considers the significance of these dynamics for the ongoing Kemalist nation-building programme. Lastly, it argues that in appearing co-optive towards local elites the state acknowledged its low political legitimacy and the weakness of its ‘cultural constituency’—educated middle classes.