Kadir Selamet

I hold a BA in Sociology from Boğaziçi University and an MA in Comparative Studies in History and Society from Koç University. My master's thesis, titled “The Role and Impact of the 1908 Revolution in the Socio-Political Transformation of the Ottoman Empire,” explored the development of capitalism, the emergence of new social organizations and classes, and the resulting institutional changes in the Ottoman Empire. During my MA years, I engaged deeply with topics such as capitalist development in non-Western countries, agrarian change, and state-led rural modernization efforts.

In addition to my academic training, I have gained valuable experience through various research positions. Since 2022, I have been serving as a Project Supervisor at the Koç University Global China Lab, where I am working on an AI-based Global Aid and Investment Tracker Project. I also contributed as a Research Assistant to Koç University’s “Politus
Project: AI-based Data Platform for Fair Social Policies” and the “Global Welfare” Research Project at National Taiwan University.

My research and publishing efforts, including a broad literature review on the Land Question and the Dispossession of Armenians, as well as a research article on Community Development in Rural Turkey between 1960-1980, have shaped my research questions for doctoral studies. Despite the growing body of scholarship on US- and Soviet-led development initiatives in the Global South post-World War II, I realized that there remains limited examination of the rationales and implementation of transnational development and rural modernization campaigns during the first half of the twentieth century.

In my doctoral research, I aim to investigate the objectives, methods, and outcomes of rural modernization programs in early Republican Turkey (1923-1950). My focus is to understand the interaction between the raison d’état and the economic rationales of the Turkish state, exploring how the state became entrenched in rural areas, the limitations it faced, and the dynamics between state officials, technicians, and the rural population at the grassroots level.