Mustafa Kemal Kurdaş

Kemal Kurdaş

Mustafa Kemal Kurdaş (* 1920 in Bursa ; † April 19, 2011 in Istanbul ) was a Turkish economist. He was his country's finance minister, advisor to Latin American governments for the IMF, and president of the Middle East University of Technology . He was also committed to the cultural heritage of Turkey.

Life

Childhood and youth

Kurdaş was born in 1920 to descendants of Turkish settlers from Macedonia . Kurdaş's ancestors had come to the Balkans with the Ottoman army and settled there. Kurdaş 'parents Şevki Kadri and Sıdıka fled to Bursa in 1912 during the Balkan Wars. His father joined Mustafa Kemal's national resistance , but was captured by Greek soldiers during the Greco-Turkish War and was imprisoned for three and a half years. Mustafa Kemal, named after Ataturk, was just four years old when his father returned. Şevki Kadri started a small business producing rakı and wine. But with the introduction of the state monopoly on alcohol, the company lost its foundation. The father placed the children in state care. As the son of a veteran, Kurdaş attended a state boarding school. He had no contact with his family until the end of elementary school. On his return the father died and the family were destitute. Kurdaş continued to attend state boarding schools and rarely saw the family.

Education and career as a civil servant

After graduating from Balıkesir Lisesi, Kurdaş attended the Faculty of Political Science at Ankara University . Upon graduation, he became an auditor in the Treasury. During this time he dealt intensively with the theories of John Maynard Keynes . In Istanbul he met Ayfer Oyal. The couple married in 1950 and had three children.

In 1951 the government sent him to the Turkish Embassy in London for a year. He took the opportunity and attended courses at the London School of Economics and studied Keynesianism intensively . Back home, he soon rose to become a finance inspector. At the age of 33 he became deputy head of the treasury in 1953 .

Due to strong import increases, Turkey ran into difficulties in the early 1950s after the boom after the Korean War. Due to the fall in world market prices for agricultural products, growth collapsed in 1953. The imports ate up the foreign exchange reserves. The Turkish government artificially kept the value of the Turkish lira high by locking the lira at 2.8 lira per US dollar. Inflation rose massively. Rapid population growth continued to drive up spending on education and infrastructure. As a result, public debt also grew. Kurdaş advocated a weakening of the lira in order to make exports cheaper and to reduce the trade deficit. He tried several times to convince the government to devalue the lira. But Menderes stuck to his policy and intensified his dirigism : Menderes responded by setting prices and increasing state controls on imports and exports. The fall in world market prices for agricultural products stalled growth in 1953 and resulted in a serious trade deficit.

In the meantime the International Monetary Fund became aware of Kurdaş and offered him a job in 1956. Kurdaş accepted, but had to flee Turkey. In an interview that appeared as an autobiography, he later said that Prime Minister Menderes was furious that the critic had defected and wanted to have his citizenship revoked. He was no longer allowed to enter the country. In 1958 Kurdaş became an IMF advisor to Latin American governments. As a result, he traveled through Latin America, studying the continent's problems and looking for solutions.

Finance minister

In 1960, Kurdaş was preparing for a trip to Venezuela when he learned that the military had carried out a coup in his homeland. The new government offered Kurdaş the post of finance minister. Even if his wife wanted to stay in America, Kurdaş agreed and returned to Ankara. On December 26, 1960 he took up the new office.

Since the state was almost insolvent, Kurdaş cut the subsidies and aid payments to state companies. He increased tax revenue by tightening the law. His efforts to devalue the lira were slow to take hold. During his tenure as finance minister, Menderes and two of his ministers were sentenced to death. Kurdaş was against the death sentences and also tried to prevent the executions. But the military prevailed and the three members of the government were executed in 1961.

Kurdaş was never a member of any party. After the election to the National Assembly in Turkey in 1961 , he left the government on November 20, 1961.

University career

Kurdaş became President of the Middle East Technical University on November 20, 1961. The university was only created in 1956 for the training of engineers, architects and economists. When Kurdaş became president, the university was still small and had only temporarily moved into buildings behind the parliament in Ankara. The state had already assigned the university a barren and mountainous area around 40 kilometers southwest of the city, but a first attempt to build the new campus had failed.

Kurdaş wanted to modernize the site and plant a forest around the campus. Since there was little money available for the plans, he collected funds from international sponsors. He then organized a three-day campaign with thousands of students and volunteers to plant trees that he had wrested from the Ministry of Forestry. More than a million trees have been planted.

The young architect couple Behruz and Altuğ Çinici won the competition for the new campus. The plans envisioned concrete buildings that combined architectural elements of Ottoman architecture and Anatolian houses with modern Western elements. In 1995, Kurdaş, Çinici and Alattin Egemen, Director of Reforestation, received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture . The laudation praised the unique reforestation project. In the meantime, more than 12 million trees had been planted, including oaks, platen, almond trees and pines.

At the end of November 1969, Kurdaş resigned as president of the university. In the following years he was active as a board member or supervisory board member for numerous companies.

Commitment to cultural heritage

Kurdaş advocated research into the prehistory and early history of Anatolia at an early stage. He accompanied excavations on the university campus in Yalıncak and initiated a museum for the artefacts found at his university with the ODTÜ Arkeoloji Müzesi . The finds were published with a foreword by Kurdaş. When the Keban Dam was built and the region threatened to be flooded, Kurdaş also campaigned for Prime Minister Demirel to carry out the emergency excavations.

When an 11,000 year old Stone Age shrine was found during excavations at Göbekli Tepe , Kurdaş saw the thesis confirmed that Anatolia was the cradle of civilization. Shortly before his death, he wanted to raise money for a series of books about the findings. The first book in the series is dedicated to him.

Works (selection)

Kurdaş published numerous books and essays on economics, but also on the Technical University of the Middle East and on archeology in Turkey.

• Yassıhöyük: A village study . Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, CRL, Ankara 1965
• Economics politikada bilim ve sağduyu . Ekonomik ve Sosyal Yayınları, Formül Matbaası, Istanbul 1979
• Economics politika üzerine incelemeler-yorumlar . Beta Basım Yayım Dağıtım, Istanbul 1994
• ODTÜ yıllarım: "bir hizmetin hikayesi" . ODTU Gelistirme Vakfı, Ankara 1998
• Bitmeyen gaflet ve Türkiye ekonomisinin çöküşü . METU Press, Ankara 2003
• with Nezih Başgelen: Yeni bulgu buluntulariyla Göbekli tepe: bu sayimiz Kemal Kurdaş'in aziz anisina ithaf edilmiştir . Arkeoloji ve Sanat, Istanbul 2011

literature

• Şengün Kılıç Hristidis: Hayatım Mücadeleyle Geçti. Kemal Kurdaş Kitabı . İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları İlk Baskı Yılı, Ankara 2010

Remarks

1. ↑ Kurdaş describes his childhood in detail in the biography of Şengün Kılıç Hristidis.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} ODTÜ'yü yaratan adam artık yok , Sabah , April 22, 2011 (Turkish)
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Mustafa Kemal Kurdaş , Biyografya, accessed on April 26, 2018
3. ↑ The Turkish Finance Ministers , Ministry of Finance of Turkey, p. 25 (Turkish)
4. ↑ ^{a b} Mücadeleyle geçen bir ömür , Sabah, April 11, 2010
5. ↑ Hayatım Mücadeleyle Geçti , Cumhuriyet , December 9, 2010
6. ^ Udo Kultermann: Constituting a Turkish Identity: the Architecture of Behruz Cinici . In: Journal of Architecture , Autumn 2000, No. V5 (see here )
7. ↑ Re-Forestation Program of METU , Aga Khan Award for Architecture, accessed on April 26, 2018 (English)
8. ↑ Abdullah Kuran: Yassihoyuk: A Study Village . Middle East Technical University, Ankara 1965
9. ↑ Osman Kurdas: On Degisik Kulvarda Kostu ... . Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Mezunlarla İletişim Dergisi, Ankara, July 2011