Governing the “Crises”: Socioeconomic Exploration of Cultural Processes in Interwar Italy and Turkey via Experiences of Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro and Halkevleri

Interwar European historiography teaches us significant lessons on states' reactive responses to economical and social instabilities. In such an atmosphere of “insecurity” one sees more states adopting socioeconomic policies for the construction of a so-called “society in harmony.” Thus such institutional policies build the path for tranquilization and participation as well as survival and reaction. This thesis questions the processes that lead to the foundation of Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND) in Italy and Halkevleri (People Houses) in Turkey in comparison. It departs with the socioeconomic analysis of capital distribution crisis and capital accumulation crisis in inter-war Italian and Turkish contexts with developing totalitarian and solidaristic corporatist models respectively. In this base, it tests the hypothesis; if employment of these institutional policies by relative inter-war governments reflected a reactionary response to crises of an “infrastructurally perceived threat” leading to social disintegration. The research methodology is developed on three levels, regards to (1) theoretical, (2) discursive and (3) policy formation matters. It firstly approaches the infrastructural and superstructural circumstances in each national context. Then it maps the perception patterns of intellectuals and law-makers leading to specific policy making practices. Following an excavation of primary and secondary sources, it observes that the hypothesis is partly rejected. The thesis defends that foundation of OND confirms the statement of being a reactionary policy against an “infrastructurally perceived threat” embodied as “organized labor”; however formation of Halkevleri negates the statement of being a reactionary policy against an “infrastructurally perceived threat.” It is observed that formation of Halkevleri reflects a reactionary policy against a “superstructurally perceived threat” imagined to be “counter-revolution.”