Dynamics of the formation of the Turkish working class, according to Görkem Akgöz

Abstract

Görkem Akgöz’s book, In the Shadow of War and Empire: Industrialisation, Nation-building and Working-Class Politics in Turkey (Brill, 2023) offers a history of Turkey's entry into capitalism from the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, beginning with the construction of the Bakırköy Textile Factory industrial complex in Istanbul in the 1840s. Her book also shows how this factory was appropriated and symbolically reinterpreted by the statist policies of the republican regime, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's party. This analysis interweaves a macrostructural perspective (global and Turkish capitalism) and a microstructural one (the work dynamics on the factory floor), revealing the political, economic, and social complexity involved in the tortuous process of state-building since the pioneering economic drive during the days of Bakırköy, once called the "Turkish Manchester."