The essays contained in this volume challenge and complement standard treatments of Turkish history during the 1930s. Typically, the 1930s are cast as a decade that opened with the Turkish economy reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. Decisionmakers in the ruling Republican People's Party (RPP) were not without a response, however. They introduced statist economic policies whereby the Turkish state began to play an augmented role in production and capital accumulation. The conventional story thus chronicles the ruling elite's most visible policy reaction to the material hardships of the 1930s.