This dissertation analyses the industrial transformation of Turkey by focusing on the history of Kayseri&rsquo / s small town Hacilar which has been showed an extraordinary performance in industry and economic development in the last 40 years. However, it is not a general history of industrialization / but a local development story from a traditional rural/ village community to an industrial production zone in relation with the local, national and universal dynamics. In line with the historical materialist conceptual and epistemological frame and against the &ldquo / Calvinist Islam&rdquo / kind theological arguments, this study explains the historical, regional, geographical, economic, social, and cultural reasons and factors of the industrial development of Hacilar in the context of the general industrial history of Turkey.

This thesis attempts to present a critical survey on studies on Anatolian capital focusing on their state and market conceptualizations. The studies have been grouped into three due to their theoretical frameworks as the studies employing New Regionalist, state tradition and state rescaling approaches. The thesis proposes New Regionalist and state tradition approaches to Anatolian capital are both ahistorical and aspatial approaches / these approaches develop in parallel with political developments and propose a glossed over portrait of Anatolian Tigers. Anatolian Tigers are generally presented as representatives of free market as they develop with little or no support of the state unlike the former generation of businessmen. Hence they stand for the legitimization of neo-liberal policies. The concepts of entrepreneurship, cooperation and competition are described as the nature and the merits of Anatolian small and medium scaled enterprises which make them compatible with the free market conditions. The last group of literature, state rescaling, is presented as the alternative to the first two with its historical and spatial analysis. The thesis will propose the relational analyses within the state rescaling framework is helpful to reveal uneven development which is veiled by ahistorical and aspatial approaches by including relations of state, capital and labour instead of defining the experience of Anatolian capital as a challenge to the state.

In this dissertation I investigate the historical, institutional, and cultural roots of different regional development trajectories in modern Turkey. Historical comparison of two similar cities of 1920's, namely Kutahya and Kayseri, enabled me to solve the Anatolian Tigers Puzzle, which can be defined as how come very similar cities of rural Anatolia in 1920's experienced such different development patterns in the last 80 years. The most similar case design led to the model, which explains the different regional development patterns of Anatolian cities. In this model, I argue that behind the success story of Kayseri, there is a path dependent virtuous cycle, which was initiated by early state enterprises; accelerated via local institutional reforms during critical junctures; and sustained by socio-cultural context. This theoretical model explains not only the difference between Kutahya and Kayseri, but it is also in line with the success story of other developed Anatolian cities. / Sociology