Problems or opportunities? Overcoming the mental barrier for socially responsible design in Turkey

Although industrial designers located in newly industrialized countries share similar, if not heavier, social, economic and environmental problems with their counterparts in advanced countries, not all of them have been forthcoming with original ideas or solutions to deal with them. This has been the case in Turkey, and this article seeks to reveal possible reasons for the shortage. The article argues that the process of late-comer industrialization, and the particular nature of design education as part of the modernization of the country, created a mental barrier for the Turkish design community which prevented it from developing genuine concepts and approaches in dealing with the most prominent problems. However, due to changing internal and external dynamics - such as the opening up of Turkish industry and society to global influences, and the level of technological development achieved by Turkish industry, there are signs that the Turkish design community has started to overcome this mental barrier. This article will review some of the initiations that support this observation, and how these dynamics have been influential in their occurrence. The article concludes that the dual abilities of designers to both understand the local context and operate in it efficiently, and also build links within the global context, would create alternative ways of existence provided that they can overcome the mental barrier that is a symptom of a late-comer industrialization and modernization process.