Gürbüz and Yavuz Sons

Sports, which stands out today as a giant branch of the entertainment industry, had mainly another function until the mid-20th century. This was the function of biopolitics; It was a dimension of the modern state's project of managing population and life.

This book examines how this policy worked during the 'Early Republic' period in Turkey. It reveals the functions that the new Turkish state attributes to physical training and sports; A dimension of the development of the welfare state... A part of population and health policies... Eugenic goals (racial sanitation)... A method of social discipline... A means of militarization of society...

We see in the book how much importance was given to the organization of physical training and sports activities, which were almost considered a "citizen duty" due to such missions, during the 'Early Republic' period. In institutionalization, attention is also drawn to the inspirations received from Soviet youth organizations on the one hand and -more heavily -fascist youth organizations on the other hand.

An important feature of the sports policy of the period was the disdain of competitive sports, especially football! However, in addition to the inadequacy of the material and organizational infrastructure, the "lack of enthusiasm" of the elements representing the game and competitive side of sports also has a share in the failure of this physical culture policy. In this excellent review, Yiğit Akın reminds us that the continuity between the Union and Progress period and the Republic should not be ignored in the physical culture policies in Turkey, while also questioning the established approaches and periodization patterns of sports historiography.



Number of Pages: 253

Year of Printing: 2004


Language: Turkish
Publisher: İletişim Publishing

First Print Year: 2004

Language Turkish