EXTENDED SUMMARY

The journal Çalışma (Labour), which started to be published by the Ministry of Labour in September 1945, shortly after the establishment of the Ministry of Labour in June 1945, can be described as the first governmental social policy publication that not only made significant contributions to the formation of social policy in Turkey, but also served as a mouthpiece for the social policy approach of the period. The second half of the 1940s were founding years for social policy and labour relations in Turkey. The establishment of the Ministry of Labour in 1945, the abolition of the ban on establishing associations (trade unions) “on behalf of and on the basis of class” in 1946 and the transition to a regime of freedom of association, the regulation of the right to unionise with Law No. 5018 in 1947, the strengthening of unionisation from 1948 onwards and the emergence of strike debates were the main developments of these years in terms of labour relations. During these turbulent years, Çalışma became a publication that deals with labour relations and social policy issues in detail. The journal included articles with contemporary and historical dimensions and in-depth analyses of a wide range of aspects of social policy. The journal covered a wide range of topics from social insurance to the right to work, from international labour issues to female workers. Çalışma was a voluminous journal regularly written by experts in social policy and labour relations of the period. In the 1940s, the journal became the intellectual centre of social policy. The authors, about 150s, of the journal were mainly from the Ministry and the bureaucracy circles and the academic world. There were four women writers among the authors. Apart from Sadi Irmak, the minister and chief author, the authors included many names from the bureaucracy. There were also many names from the world of the academia among the journal’s authors. Gerhard Kessler and Alfred Isaac, who had to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s and came to work in Turkey, were among the most prominent authors. Gerhard Kessler founded the Chair of Sociology and Social Politics at Istanbul University’s Faculty of Economics and established the foundations of the social policy field in Turkey. Alfred Isaac is the founder of the Chair of Business Economics at Istanbul University and also the person who laid the foundations of modern business education in Turkey. Orhan Tuna and Cahit Talas, pioneers of social policy in Turkey, were also among the journal’s authors.

In addition to being an intellectual social policy centre, the journal also became the mouthpiece of the regime’s official social policy approach. As such, it took a distant and antagonistic stance towards social policy issues (class, politics, strikes, and internationalism) that were controversial for the regime. The journal, which was among the founding corpus of social policy in Turkey, also had an important constraint. The journal was bounded to the social policy approach of the regime and the CHP. It had authoritarian and paternalistic approaches to the issue of strikes and trade unions. Therefore, it is also possible to characterize the journal as the regime’s social policy publication.

The journal, which started its publication in September 1945, was published monthly except for a few issues until September 1947, but then its publication period started to be interrupted. The last issue of Çalışma, which was published for a total of 29 issues, is dated December 1950. The essay will focus on all the 29 issues of Çalışma published between September 1945 and December 1950. After the Democrat Party’s rule, a journal titled Çalışma Vekaleti Dergisi was published in 1953 and other journals titled Çalışma Dergisi and Çalışma Hayatımız were published in the 1970s. Yet, we consider that these journals are not a successor to Çalışma. For this reason, the article will concentrate on the journal Çalışma, which was published for 29 issues between 1945 and 1950.

The journal Çalışma will be analysed in the light of the labour relations of the period and the regime’s approach to labour relations, as well as the environmental conditions. Besides being an important intellectual social policy centre as of the period, the journal also revealed the boundaries of the regime’s approach to social policy and labour relations. As with the mentality that dominated the Labour Law No. 3008, the Journal took a paternalistic approach to individual labour relations and an authoritarian approach to collective labour relations and trade union rights.

Our study is based on the complete collection of the journal. The 29th issue, which has not been addressed in any study to date, will be brought to light for the first time in this study. The 29th issue, the last issue of the journal, which was not published for a long time, was published during the DP government period (December 1950). Our study has been prepared as a documentary study based on the perspective of comparative history.