The discipline of political science owes its origins to the nineteenth century in many countries. Often the discourse on the theory and practice of politics preceded the formal institutionalization of the discipline. Turkey is no exception. A quick glance at the emergence of political science in the West reveals that political science has grown out of moral philosophy in the Anglo-Saxon world and out of the discipline of law in much of continental Europe. From a historical perspective, the development of Turkish political science has followed the latter path. In particular, the influence of France has been of paramount significance. Since the era of reforms in the mid-nineteenth century, Turkish bureaucrats and intellectuals in France enjoyed a growing presence. The Ottoman modernizing elite, above all, took after the French model. Among the French institutions copied was the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques (1871) established by Emile Boutmy (Mardin 1983, 94–5). The Ottoman response to the French institution was the adaptation of the Ecole's program to the Mülkiye, the School of Administration opened in 1859 in Istanbul (Çankaya 1954, 34). The purpose of the Mülkiye was to educate knowledgable high- or middle-ranking bureaucrats (Çankaya 62–3; Turan 1997, 186–7). Although the curriculum did not include a course with the title, we can observe one of the earliest references to the term “political science” in the budget expense document of the Mülkiye dated 23 February 1877 (see Çankaya 1968–9, I, 126).

Put briefly, the Mülkiye was the central institution for the transfer of discourse on political science from continental Europe to the declining Ottoman state. Textbooks of prominent law professors of the Mülkiye and later also the Darülfünun (predecessor of Istanbul University) reveal that professors were well aware of the idea of a science of politics. The first constitutional law textbooks—written after a genuine constitutional monarchy was established in the Ottoman Empire in 1908—by Babanzade Ýsmail Hakký contain references to political science (Babanzade Ýsmail Hakký 1909–1910, 7). By the 1910s, the evidence suggests that professors knew not just about the French concept of “science politique” but also the German concepts of “Staatslehre” and “Staatswissenschaft.” The Ottoman professors of law were also familiar with the Allgemeine Staatslehre literature, especially with the work of Johann Kaspar Bluntschli. In rejecting Bluntschli's general approach to politics, Babanzade Ýsmail Hakký, nevertheless, agreed with his definition that identifies political science as “science of the state” (Babanzade Ýsmail Hakký 1909–1910, 7). This outlook is not consistently shared by other professors of law at the Mülkiye or the Darülfünun. However, it displays an interesting historical parallel with the history of American political science, which was also perceived as the science of the state for a good part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century under the influence of Francis Lieber, Theodore Woolsey, Westel Willoughby, and John Burgess.

The founding of the Republic in 1923 did not lead to the immediate flourishing of political science in Turkey. During the one-party era (1923–1945), the overarching concern was to secure, maintain, and perpetuate the republican regime. The Turkish Republic implemented a dramatic overhaul of Ottoman institutions. Educating and socializing the masses into the modernist, Westernist regime became the major goal. To achieve this, the republicans gave the highest priority to educating a loyal republican elite. As the founders of the republic consolidated their power during the initial years, Turkish politics entered a new stage where ideological mobilization by elite initiative became even more important. One result of this effort was the closing of the Darülfünun (the traditional institution of higher learning) and the opening of Istanbul University in 1933. The new university was, as then-Minister of Education Reþit Galip put it, to be one of the “spearheads” of the Turkish Reform (Arslan 1995, 359). Still the refurbished university—the only one in Turkey at the time—did not have a separate department of political science.

Another result of the elite-led mobilization was the transformation of the Mülkiye into a “School of Political Sciences,” moving it from Istanbul— the capital of the Ottomans—to Ankara, the capital of the Republic. The idea of moving the Mülkiye goes back to 1931; but it was implemented in 1935 (Çankaya 1954, 206ff). The new School was to be the major center for training conscious, enthusiastic, and regime-loyal civil servants and bureaucrats. In other words, the school would continue to train civil servants as in the nineteenth century, but also inculcate in them a dedication to republican institutions and ideology.

The School of Political Sciences journal, Mülkiye Mektebi Mecmuasý, was first published in 1931. It is there we start to observe the discourse on political science most distinctly in the republican era. Hasan þükrü Adal published “Could Politics Be a Vocation?” (1931), a translation from an article published in Virginia Quarterly Review, which constituted one of the earliest pieces on the subject. The article emphasized the need for a young generation of intellectuals able and willing to serve public needs (Adal 1931, 16). The journal changed its name once the Mülkiye was transferred to Ankara. It became The Journal of Political Sciences in 1935. The change in name had been prompted, however, by a language reform and did not, by itself, signal a change in the curriculum or the emergence of a separate department of political science.

From 1935 onwards, the concept of political science slowly found its place in several textbooks and articles. Still the interest in the subject was scant and sporadic. In 1936, Nusret Köymen, known for his studies on village sociology, published an article on Kemalism and “political knowledge.” There he argued that Kemalism, the official ideology of the Turkish republican regime, needed to be “scientized.” There was a need for intellectuals well-versed in knowledge concerning politics (Köymen 1936, 322–3). To Köymen, however, politics had not yet become a full-blown science. It could only be partially helpful (Köymen 1936, 321–2). This judgment about the inadequacy of the scientific stature and independence of political science became a repeated theme well into mid-1960s.

The transmission of European political science discourse into Turkey received a momentum jump in 1937 with the publication of the translation of Fritz Fleiner's conference in Zurich on 26 November 1916, entitled “Politik als Wissenschaft” [Politics as a Science]. It is interesting to note that unlike Fleiner's, Max Weber's famous conference delivered three years later entitled “Politics As a Vocation” did not become as highly acclaimed and referred to by Turkish academics of the period. The earliest authentic Turkish contribution to political science discourse had to wait until 1940. Hasan þükrü Adal's article entitled “Political Sciences: Its Subject Matter and Method” (1940) and Nihat Erim's article entitled “The Concept of Politics” (1943) are the earliest forays of Turkish academics into political science in a self-conscious manner. Still, the common point was the lack of consensus on whether there was a science of politics. Adal believed that unless “the realm of politics” is considered to be an “independent realm of knowledge,” politics cannot be a science (Adal 1940, 438). Erim's article was not clear on this point, either. He referred to politics as “the art of administering a state,” as “the science of administering a state,” and finally as the collection of unconventional methods and “intrigue” to capture power (Erim 1943, 153, 211, 289). At any rate, both Adal and Erim, the authors of first authentic pieces on the subject matter and methods of political science, understood politics as a concept that relates to power and the state. Many of the continental political science professors, including Fleiner himself, also understood political science in this manner (Fleiner 1937, 6).

As David Easton et al. have argued in a comparative study of the history of political science (1995), Turkish political science owes its coming of age partly to democratization in Turkey. Turkey witnessed a dramatic democratic change of power with the victory of the Democrat Party (DP) in 1950. Beginning in the mid-1950s, there also began a proliferation of institutions of higher education in the country. Obviously, the new party and multi-party political life attracted the interest of academics in many fields, including law. Tarýk Zafer Tunaya, professor of law at Istanbul University, took a very important step in 1952 by prefacing his pathbreaking book Political Parties in Turkey with a statement that the book was intended as “a modest contribution to political science” (Tunaya 1952, viii). The book, mainly a compilation of documents relating to political parties in Turkey, contained a lengthy introduction inspired by Maurice Duverger's well-known work. The discussion centered around the concept of party as institution. By implication, political science was conceived as something to do with institutions, including but not limited to the state. This institutionalist bent to the origins of Turkish political science has persisted and still persists, albeit not entirely in the same historically oriented fashion as Tunaya would have liked.¹

We must also note that the French influence on the institutionalist formation of Turkish political science has been very important, especially through the works of Maurice Hauriou, André Hauriou, Maurice Duverger, and Georges Burdeau.

Still, Tunaya's book remained no more than a pioneering effort until the 1960s. For instance, Yavuz Abadan, another professor of law who served as the Dean of the Faculty²

of Political Science, intimated that he was not convinced that politics could become an independent science. He raised this point in his book, Public Law and the Theories of the State (1952). Abadan's main argument was that the multifarious and constantly changing nature of political phenomena does not allow politics to become an independent science (Abadan 1952, 116–8; also see Abadan 1959). Interestingly, Yavuz Abadan would lead the establishment of the Turkish Political Science Association (TPSA) in 1964. After an interview with the widow of the late professor, Turan reports that Abadan was finally convinced that the public law and political science disciplines could be separate after he spent the 1962–3 academic year in Berlin (Turan 2001, 14).

Between 1952 and 1964, Turkish politics became very interesting to study. During the late 1950s, people were visibly politicized in favor or against the ruling party, the DP. In this atmosphere, Turkey had become a member of NATO, benefitted from Marshall Aid, and became closer politically and strategically to the U.S. Students started to flock to U.S rather than French or German graduate schools. However, American political science did not immediately exert a visible influence among Turkish academics. The ongoing behavioral revolution was yet to reach Turkey. In Istanbul, Tarýk Zafer Tunaya remained as the major representative of French influence. In a newspaper article, “University and Politics,” published in the politically charged atmosphere of early 1960, Tunaya referred to Maurice Duverger and the organization of political science in France in a sympathetic manner. The International Political Science Association (IPSA) and its role also received mention. Tunaya publicly and boldly defended the establishment of an independent political science discipline. To him, such a discipline was necessary so professors could freely and scientifically reflect on the government and on the way the country was governed (Cumhuriyet, January 28,1960; see also Tunaya 1969, 171–2).

After the 1960 military intervention, we finally observe the foundation of a separate space for the teaching of political science at Istanbul University, in the Faculty of Economics in 1961 (Turan 1997, 189). The growth rather than the formal institutionalization of Turkish political science was a product of democratization. Ironically, this occurred after Turkey re-democratized following the military take-over in 1960. After 1961, research and publications on both the discipline itself and on political phenomena grew rapidly. The single most important figure of this growth era was Nermin Abadan (Unat), former wife of the late Yavuz Abadan. Nermin Abadan-Unat should be credited for bringing an energetic research tradition to Turkish political science. Her study on the comparative development of political science in the U.S., the UK, Germany, and France is still of importance in the comparative history of political science (Abadan 1962). As early as 1962, she emphasized the positive relationship between the development of democracy and the development of political science in a comparative fashion (Abadan 1962, 176; Easton et al. 1995, 3). She is one of the earliest academics in Turkey to publish on the history of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and on the history of American political science.

Nermin Abadan's book (in Turkish) on The Analysis of 1965 Elections [in Turkey] from the Perspective of Constitutional Law and Political Sciences (1966) represents a big leap forward in the history of Turkish political science as far as research methods are concerned. The book benefits from a great deal of literature on parties, elections, and methods in several languages. Perhaps the book's most innovative feature is the combination and application of different methods in political science to the 1965 elections in Turkey. Statistical data analysis, electoral geography, and interviews with opinion leaders in several cities are used simultaneously in the same monograph (Abadan 1966, xi–xvi). This kind of research in political science had not previously been done in Turkey.

After the foundation of the TPSA, Nermin Abadan actively participated in IPSA Congresses and published a summary version of the proceedings in Turkish journals (Abadan 1968; 1970; also see Ataöv 1967). These publications are of great significance in the sense that they introduced the Turkish readership to the current trends, studies, discussions, and debates within the larger international community of political scientists.³

These publications were also significant in helping Turkish political science to develop an identity of its own.

From the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, the TPSA published major works of political science in collaboration with the United States Information Agency. Seymour Martin Lipset's The Political Man; George Sabine's History of Political Thought; Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies and; portions of the Handbook of Political Science, among others (Turan 2001, 15). The Minutes of the Executive Committee (MEC) of the TPSA reflect the existence of a lively academic atmosphere of research, publication and conference participation since the early 1970s. The 1970s was an era of high democratic expectations, political activism, and widespread political socialization as it also was an era of instability, extreme radicalization, and daily violence. The TPSA was an active organization of academics in this period. On May 8–10, 1975, the TPSA organized the first National Political Science Symposium in Ankara, the program of which was prepared by Nermin Abadan-Unat and Ergun Özbudun (MEC, 9). Sadly, the papers submitted could not be published by the TPSA due to the skyrocketing price of paper (MEC, 14). Oversight mechanisms in democratic systems and comparative studies on presidential and parliamentary systems were among the covered subjects (MEC, 23, 42).

The TPSA expanded its academic activities onto a global scale with the publication of a volume in English on Turkish politics, Perspectives on Democracy in Turkey (1988). Ergun Özbudun, the former president of the TPSA, prefaced the book stating that “[it] aims at presenting an overview of the development of democracy in Turkey, as well as major democratic institutions such as elections, political parties and the legislature. In all of the essays, an analytical, rather than a purely descriptive approach has been followed” (Özbudun et al. 1988, preface). The institutional analysis first displayed with Tunaya's book in 1952 was dominant. Actually, from the first introductory textbook on political science published in Turkey by Bülent Daver in 1969 well into introductory textbooks of the 1990s, institutional analysis has persisted and still persists. Even in the current decade a great majority of publications in Turkish political science still center around the development of democracy, modernization, Westernization, and the problems attached to each. Of course, there are those who concentrate on more theoretical issues, political philosophy, and hermeneutics. Yet the study of institutions is visibly predominant. This is partly understandable, for Turkish political institutions that had to endure military coups, corruption, and violence present interesting research agendas. Unlike many Western democracies, legitimacy questions continue to arise about the space certain institutions hold in Turkish political life. One need not be clairvoyant to expect that institutions will continue to attract the greater bulk of research in Turkish political science in view of the challenges posed by Turkey's bid to enter the European Union.