America and the Making of Modern Turkey: Science, Culture and Political Alliances.

• Author: Bayramoglu, Busra
• Position: Book review

America and the Making of Modern Turkey: Science, Culture and Political Alliances

By Ali Erken

London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018, 226 pages, $80,07, ISBN: 9781788311700

In the beginning of the 20th century, relations between states began to transform into a global system that included non-state actors. In addition to states as the main actors of international relations, non-state actors have since that time played a crucial role in the international system. Ali Erken's book, America and the Making of Modern Turkey: Science, Culture and Political Alliances, explores the activities of American philanthropic organizations in Turkey, such as the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. This book provides readers with extensive research based on archival records. It consists of four chapters, along with an introduction and conclusion. All four chapters revolve around questions about the investments of American foundations in Turkey after the 1920s.

In the first chapter, Erken explains the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation in the fields of medical and health services in Turkey. Erken examines the leading role of the Foundation in the global field of scientific medicine, and explores why the Foundation staff decided to invest in Turkey and how to formulate its activities there. The

Rockefeller Foundation was in favor of working with well-trained local talent (p. 36), because its activities could be more readily achieved with the help of an already educated cultural class that could combine an understanding of the Foundation's spirit and tradition with Western education and training (p. 31). In the late nineteenth century, the students of the School of Medicine (Tibbiye) who founded the Committee of Union and Progress played a central role in Turkey's Western intellectual transformation. Scientific and medical research continued with the efforts of the founding elites of the Republic such as Refik Saydam, a graduate of the School of Medicine and the first minister of health in the young Turkish Republic. Erken outstandingly explains the efforts of the founding elites in the development of Turkish medicine. For instance, ismet Inonu asked the Foundation to send a representative to Turkey to help the government with the building of a modern Central Institute of Hygiene in Ankara. Refik Saydam requested Rockefeller aid in the development of the Institute of Hygiene and a Childcare House, and in establishing training fellowships for Turkish...