Murat İplikçi

Bio

Murat Iplikci, Ph.D., earned his BA (2012) from Bilkent University, Department of Industrial Engineering, his master’s degrees from Bilkent University (2015) and Illinois State University (ISU) (2019) Department of History. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the Department of History at Bilkent University in December 2022. His research interests are in the investments of American multinational companies in Turkey within the framework of diplomatic, commercial, and business relations between Turkey and the USA. He previously worked as a doctoral researcher at a TUBITAK project entitled ‘The Globalization of the Atom: Nuclear Trade and the Spread of Atomic Weapons.’ He is a postdoctoral researcher in the Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies at Columbia University.

Project Description

Murat's current research aims to analyze establishing an American-style business school at Istanbul University with the support of Harvard Business School and the Ford Foundation. This process can be considered a turning point in deepening business and commercial relations between Turkey and the US during the early Cold War period. An in-depth study of this institution's history will help explain why, from the late 1950s onwards, American multinationals, American-style Turkish companies, and Turkish executives working in these companies have proliferated in Turkey. In years, Harvard Business School professors trained such notable figures in Turkish business and political history. In addition to the interest of American multinational corporations such as Ford, Pfizer, and Exxon, Turkish well-known business families such as Koç, Eczacıbaşı, and Sabancı, Turkish banks such as İş Bankası and Ziraat financed the activities of the school.

This research aims to make an original contribution to the existing literature by focusing on a topic that has yet to be comprehensively addressed before, both in the context of business history and the history of Turkey-US relations, which gained new momentum after 1945. More specifically, the research will emphasize the impact of commercial relations between the two countries and the role of American business culture in Turkey rather than general issues such as the US's political, military, and economic impact on Turkey. A better understanding of business relations and culture will bring a new perspective to political and economic studies and free the evaluations of bilateral relations from state-level generalizations by highlighting the influence of individuals and private companies.