Suchergebnisse

The "Professor" is not a machine for giving lectures, but is a resource to the students-one who inspires them to investigate and question, one who guides them and one who is able to sustain their enthusiasm for study and research. The real professor is himself a lifelong student. (Reşit Galip, Minister of Education, Istanbul University, 1933)During the 1930s, in the upper circles of public life and the professions, the Kemalist excitement and energy for establishing a great new nation was strong. Leadership came from many individuals, each offering what he or she could do to involve younger persons in the process. The state was not yet a robust civil institution, as it lacked economic resources, especially during the 1920s and the depression years of the 1930s. It was only beginning to gain experience in dealing with and taking the lead in civil affairs.

The main purpose of this paper is to present some basic information about the population of Turkey and its interpretation in a manner which readers of New Perspectives will find interesting for their purposes. One way to do this is to notice how certain population issues are handled in the public and scholarly discourse. Then, as a demographer and social scientist I will comment on some of these issues and hope to clarify them. Second is to present some of the main features of the macro-demography of Turkey. The account is unavoidably quantitative, but I hope digestible even by those who have aversions to numerical analysis. When the truly large changes in the size and age structure of the population are seen, important questions about the effect of these changes on other fields arise, and it is interesting to think about them. Third, the urbanization of Turkey is one of the central and most important changes in the demographic structure of the society during the last 40 years. I mention its characteristics along with a brief look at the effects on the demography of Istanbul.

The people of Turkey at the end of the War of Independence could hardly have imagined the long era of peace and national development that was to follow. They had just been through more than a decade of struggle to survive against the odds of warfare abroad and at home, epidemics, and serious interferences with the normal material means of livelihood. Loss of life and permanent disability were legacies for many families of the 1911–1922 period. Practically every community was affected in some life-threatening way by the ambitions of outside powers and their local allies or by the last Ottoman campaigns (the Balkans, North Africa, Gallipoli, the Russian front, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and the Hejaz). Only the independence struggle itself finally resolved the issues of territoriality, governance, and the right to reside in peace. The new Republic was founded in 1923.

Mit Rückblicken bis 1895/96 und Hinweisen auf die Entwicklung bis 1975