A PATRIOTIC LEFTIST DEVELOPMENT-STRATEGY PROPOSAL IN TURKEY INTHE 1930S: THE CASE OF THE KADRO (CADRE) MOVEMENT

Abstract

This article attempts to make a contribution to the intellectual history of the early Turkish Republic through an examination of Kadro, a monthly journal of political, economic, and social ideas, which was published in Turkey between 1932 and 1934.¹ The Kadro movement took its name from the journal Kadro; the journal aspired to fulfill two self-appointed tasks: to develop an ideological framework in which to interpret the Turkish revolution that had created the republican regime led by President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,² and to suggest economic policies that, in accordance with this ideological framework, the regime should pursue in the future. Although Kadro clearly identified itself with the republican regime, and although its publication was sanctioned and encouraged by leaders of the Kemalist regime (the same political leadership that eventually forced Kadro to cease publication), it was not a simple emanation of the government or of the ruling Republican People's Party (RPP). Most of the journal's regular writers had “leftist” backgrounds that had, on occasion, brought them into collision with the republican authorities. Kadro's political loyalty to the regime was never in question, but within these limits, it exhibited a striking degree of intellectual independence.