TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE 19TH CENTURY OTTOMAN EMPIRE

What explains Turkey's current innovation and competition gap? How is it a path-dependent phenomenon? Is it a case of unsuccessful modernizer in economic matters? This article aims to shed some lights on these issues. In the domain of intellectual property rights, Turkey's historical path shows that its predecessor, i.e. the Ottoman Empire, relied on a traditional guild-monopoly system for the provision of goods and services to the subjects at an affordable price and in sufficient quantity until the late nineteenth century. In the period of modernization, the Ottomans introduced trademark and patent laws, in 1871 and 1879, respectively, following the major traders and industrialized countries of the age. However, examining the state of the Ottoman economy in the nineteenth century-an age of economic collapse vis-à-vis the industrialized countries-the intellectual property rights regulations were not a result of a well-planned policy designed by the Ottoman intellectuals and statesmen. Despite the radical change of polity, some patterns in modern Turkey, such as fewer patenting activity by the domestic innovators and lower R&D level at large, imply path dependencies with the patterns of the economic activities during the late Ottoman era. The fact that Turkey, as the main successor of the Ottoman Empire, suffers a large innovativeness gap between today's main innovators (both early and late industrializers) raises important questions on the ability to manage the change and path dependencies in the economic institutionalization since the Ottoman era. Türkçe Özet: Türkiye ekonomisinin dünya teknoloji rekabetindeki yeri neresidir? Türkiye'nin belli başlı dünya ülkeleriyle arasındaki teknolojik yenilik uçurumunn nedenlerini nasıl açıklayabiliriz? Bu olgu yapışkan, tarihsel bir olgu mudur? Teknoloji üretiminin yetersizliği Türk modernleşmesinin bir parçası olarak ekonomik kurumsallaşmasının başarısızlığının bir sonucu mudur? Türkiye'nin ekonomik değere dönüştürülebilir fikir üretiminin altyapısı hangi koşullarda oluşturuldu? 19. yüzyıl Osmanlı ekonomisinin görünümü nasıldı? Zaman diliminde bugünden gerriye doğru Osmanlı dönemi devlet idaresinin ekonomi yönetimine nasıl yaklaşılabilir? 19. yüzyılda uygulanan kamuda istihdam edilme şartları yönetim kalitesi hakkında nasıl fikir verir? Bu makale, bu ve benzeri soruların yanıtlarını bulmamızda bazı ipuçları sağlamayı amaçlamaktadır.

“Technologies of Rebellion: Ottoman Balkans as a Site of Technological Contestation, 1878-1912” in New Europe College Yearbook 2014-2015, ed. Irina Vainovski-Mihai (Bucharest: New Europe College, 2018) pp.299-330.

The Economic History Review, 2010

acknowledges with pleasure financial support from the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Technology Entrepreneurship and Access to Financial Resources in Turkey, 2021

Technology entrepreneurship plays a dominant role in the economy and development of the country, especially in this period of increasing competition and globalization. Related developments contribute significantly to the country’s welfare and development level traditional commercial and craft habits have been transformed through technological advances. Developing countries attach importance to strong technology-based sectors to sustain growth and create employment for young people. For this reason, country ministers determine technology entrepreneurship as the primary target and strategy. Turkey, with 754 billion dollars, is the world’s 19th largest economy by GDP. Currently, the state of technological entrepreneurship in Turkey comprises 60% of the country’s economy (as created by the private sector) and will be examined within our study. In addition, whether this entrepreneurship has access to sufficient financial resources and the changes and innovations made in this field within other countries will also be compared.

In the 19 th century, the empire experienced dramatic transformations and changes as a result of modernization-westernization efforts of the successive bureaucrats and sultans. The empire tried to reform itself to get rid of its backwardness to resist the external and internal challenges to its very existence. Reforms to create a modern state moved on their way with an increasing pace, they effected not only political and social aspects but also economic aspects of the empire. This paper covers the changes in two economic institutions, the right of private property in land and the public debts. These two were the witnesses and the agents of the institutional change as the empire tried to adapt itself to the world system.

Middle Eastern Studies, 2008

2015

Is it possible to generate "capitalist spirit" in a society, where cultural, economic and political conditions did not unfold into an industrial revolution, and consequently into an advanced industrial-capitalist formation? This is exactly what some prominent public intellectuals in the late Ottoman Empire tried to achieve as a developmental strategy; long before Max Weber defined the notion of capitalist spirit as the main motive behind the development of capitalism. This book demonstrates how and why Ottoman reformists adapted (English and French) economic theory to the Ottoman institutional setting and popularized it to cultivate bourgeois values in the public sphere as a developmental strategy. It also reveals the imminent results of these efforts by presenting examples of how bourgeois values permeated into all spheres of socio-cultural life, from family life to literature, in the late Ottoman Empire. The text examines how the interplay between Western European economic theories and the traditional Muslim economic cultural setting paved the way for a new synthesis of a Muslim-capitalist value system; shedding light on the emergence of capitalism―as a cultural and an economic system―and the social transformation it created in a non-Western, and more specifically, in the Muslim Middle Eastern institutional setting. This book will be of great interest to scholars of modern Middle Eastern history, economic history, and the history of economic thought.

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