The (Re)production of the Industrial Labor Force in Early Republican Turkey: The Case of Sümerbank and Etibank

One of the major problems of the statist industrialization policies in 1930s and 1940s in Turkey was both the quantitative and qualitative deficiencies in terms of industrial labor force. State-run enterprises of Sümerbank and Etibank, which were established in that period, did not only lead the drive for industrialization, but also for handling the labor force problems including high rates of worker rotation, lack of skilled workers, or the issue of peasant-workers, and initiated several programs and facilities which had crucial consequences as far as the formation of an industrial working class and the reproduction of industrial labor force were concerned. The article focuses on three of them -housing, nutrition and health programs- by examining the evaluations of the bureaucrats and factory managements as well as the experiences and reactions of the Etibank and Sümerbank workers