Kurthan Fisek as the Founder of the Marxist Tradition in the Public Administration Discipline in Turkey

Abstract

Following the agreements between the U.S.A., the U.N. and Turkey, the public administration discipline in Turkey had been established by foreign academics in 1950s, and the duty of disseminating-advancing the discipline was left to native academics by the 1960s. As being a member of the first young academic generation of the period following the handover between foreign and native academics, Kurthan Fisek is the one who made many studies during his interrupted academic life, which started as a research assistant in the public administration department of the Faculty of Political Science in 1966. Two main factors, namely, his academic lift in that department and Marxism affected his studies. The combination of these two factors produced the re-interpretation of the mainstream public administration knowledge with the method, concepts and categories of Marxism and gave a birth to a new -Marxist- tradition in the discipline.