The Issue of Drugs, the Industrial Situation, and Psychiatric Debates in Interwar Turkey

Abstract This article explores the multidimensional issue of drug policy in Turkey during the interwar era and its intersection with economic policy, public health concerns, and psychiatric discourse. As one of the world’s leading producers of opium, Turkey resisted international opium control conventions until the 1930s, viewing them as a means of Western economic domination. Parallel to this, domestic public debates increasingly framed addiction in medical terms, through the lenses of eugenics, nationalism, and racialized rhetoric. The article highlights the pivotal role of the psychiatrist Mazhar Osman in shaping these discourses, particularly through his reports to the League of Nations. In these reports, Osman portrayed addiction as a symptom of moral decay and presented Turkey’s repressive minority policies as a success in combatting the illegal drug trade. Drawing on archival materials, including government documents, medical literature, and contemporary newspapers, this study argues that Turkey’s opposition to international drug conventions was rooted not only in economic self-interest, but also in broader struggles over national sovereignty, modernity and the racialized construction of addiction as a social threat.