Abstract:

In the first years of the Republic, a great importance was given to railways in the transportation field to ensure the security and development of Turkey. For this purpose, the railway companies and lines in the hands of foreigners were first nationalized. Then the corporate structure was arranged and thousands of kilometers of railway lines were built. This process continued until the end of the Second World War (1939-1945). But after the war ended, the work slowed down and came to a stop. This was a decisive role in Turkey’s approach to the West against Soviet Russia in a two-pole world order, especially the United States. Depending on the development of relations with the United States, the government policy in Turkey from the beginning of the 1930s to the end of the 1940s would have replaced it with an open-air liberal economic order. The open-air liberal economic system implemented by the Democratic Party (1950-1960), which came to power in 1950, brought the beginning of a new process in the transportation. In the transport sector in Turkey between the 1950-1960s, when the road came to the forefront, the weight was given to the construction of the road, which provided transport to the most expensive parts of the country and the construction and operating costs were low compared to the railway. Thus, at the end of the ten years, 14,462 km were added to the road network. The construction of the railway line was limited to 224 km. With this study a radical change in the transport system of Turkey occurred in the 1950-1960 period, the effects of the practices in the transport policy on railway construction, internal and external factors were studied by addressing in the axis.

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