Between 1939 and 1941 An Evaluation on C.H.P. Conference Series and Social Darwinism Within the Framework of Efforts to Transform Society

This study attempts to analyze the “C.H.P. Conferences Series” organized by the leading academics of the period acrossthe country at a time when the codes of the Republic of Turkey were being rewritten from the perspective of Social Darwinism, one of the dominant paradigms of the period. The study focuses primarily on the intellectual currents that shaped the C.H.P. Conferences. Social Darwinism, which became a dominant paradigm in the West in the period between the two world wars, left its mark on the relevant period, although it was applied in different ways in various countries. In Hitler’s Germany, in particular, it became state policy and the whole of society was sought to be shaped by this idea. In Germany and other countries, science was used as a legitimizing basis. Eugenics, the most popular concept of Social Darwinism, sterilized people, banned interracial marriages and reduced and defined human biology. In Turkey, the newly established regime and its elites turned towards the West, saw it as a target and tried to build their society accordingly. This situation was idealized as “contemporary civilization”. In the three-year period between 1939 and 1941, a group of leading academics of the period launched a mobilization under the name “C.H.P. Conferences Series” in order to accustom society to their ideas and ideals. In these conferences, it can be seen that an attempt was made to explain all aspects of social life to the participants within the framework of the evolutionary paradigm, the scientific language of the time, and its main extension, Social Darwinism. In this study, after first presenting the various reflections of the relevant paradigm in the West, the works that were later published in twenty-four fascicles were subjected to a qualitative analysis within the concepts of social Darwinism and the relationship between them was tried to be revealed. In this way, the direction of social change in the Single Party Period is attempted to be understood.