Turkish Cooperatives Society and the ruling party in the 1930s: the rise and fall of a regimented public sphere

ABSTRACT This study scrutinizes the relations between the cooperative societies and the ruling party in Turkey in the 1930s. The ruling party (the Republican Peoples’ Party) mobilized the cooperative societies to avert the subversive effects of the Great Depression. Besides their economic significance, cooperative societies were formulated as alternative communication channels between the ruler and the ruled. It is argued that under the single party regime the RPP generated a regimented public sphere over these organizations to forward its messages to the masses. The periodicals published by the Turkish Cooperatives Society, the national federation of the cooperatives, provide invaluable insights into the catalyzer role of the bureaucratic intelligentsia in the construction and deconstruction of this public sphere. It is suggested that the interactions between the ruling authority and the bureaucratic intelligentsia generate a certain pattern of political culture displaying the dialectical forces immanent to any public sphere.