Wilhelm Röpke and Alexander Rüstow in Turkey: a missed legacy?

Wilhelm Röpke and Alexander Rüstow were important intellectuals, crucial both for their scientific contribution and for their concrete influence on the political and economic rebirth of Germany after WWII. They were among the founding fathers of the Social Market Economy. Their philosophy had the ambition of combining the free market with a set of moral values well rooted in society. They arrived at the University of Istanbul in 1933, and became part of a large group of “émigrés” who are invited to teach in the newly formed University. In that period they were publishing important works and wrote some textbooks for their students. Some of these works have never been properly analysed. Apparently, between Röpke, Rüstow and Turkey there is a story of a missed encounter. Even though within the academy they were respected as eminent scholars, they were marginalized because of their positions in favour of the free market. Investigating the relationship, so far largely unexplored, between Rüstow, Röpke and the nation that hosted them is particularly interesting, both from the point of view of studying the two authors’ ideas, and from the point of view of studying Turkish culture.