İzmir Economic Congress () was held in

İzmir İzmir is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara. It is on the Aegean Sea, Aegean coast of Anatolia, and is the capital of İzmir Province. In 2024, the city of İzmir had ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

between 17 February - 4 March 1923, shortly after the end of the

Turkish War of Independence , strength1 = May 1919: 35,000November 1920: 86,000Turkish General Staff, ''Türk İstiklal Harbinde Batı Cephesi'', Edition II, Part 2, Ankara 1999, p. 225August 1922: 271,000Celâl Erikan, Rıdvan Akın: ''Kurtuluş Savaşı tarih ...

and during the interval between the two conferences that led to the

Lausanne Treaty The Treaty of Lausanne (, ) is a peace treaty negotiated during the Lausanne Conference of 1922–1923 and signed in the Palais de Rumine in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923. The treaty officially resolved the conflict that had initially ...

the same year. The conference was held in order to emphasize the importance of Turkish economic development, as the country had been shattered by years of war. Early Turkish economic policy was articulated at this congress. The newborn republic was to have a mixed economy—as advised by

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ( 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish field marshal and revolutionary statesman who was the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first President of Turkey, president from 1923 until Death an ...

. Mustafa Kemal's conjunctural words have long been quoted by the statist economists in Turkey in an effort to justify the state's role in economy. A second Congress under the same name and with stressed references to the first was held in 1981 after the

1980 Turkish coup d'état The 1980 Turkish coup d'état (), headed by Chief of the General Staff General Kenan Evren, was the third coup d'état in the history of the Republic of Turkey, the previous having been the 1960 coup and the 1971 coup by memorandum. During ...

, and a third (named Economic Congress of Turkey) was organized by Turkey's State Planning Organization (''T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı'') in 2004, both times also in İzmir, although these last two are far from having the historic significance of the first. An exhibition of various commercial products organized simultaneously to the Congress, in İzmir's Hamparsumyan House, used as storehouse for the Ottoman Bank at the time, is considered to be the precursor of today's İzmir International Fair.

References

* Lewis, Bernard. " The Emergence of Modern Turkey". Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. * Zurcher, Eric. "Turkey: A Modern History". London: I.B. Tauris, 1993. {{DEFAULTSORT:Izmir Economic Congress Economic Congress Economic Congress 1923 in Turkey Economic history of Turkey 1923 conferences Events in İzmir

See also

References