Unlike the Ottoman modernization throughout the 18th and 19thcentury, Republican modernization has made its choice for replacing thecurrent legal, cultural and social values and institutions with purelyWestern ones. Republican modernization is multi-dimensional andcovers all aspects of the life of society and the state. In the study,modernization steps in the first quarter-century of the Republic arediscussed in the context of social politics in legal and political terms.Mentioned period is between the two world wars. Struggling with severalwars, Turkey stood out as a poor society in economic and social wayswith a meager population for employment in the period 1923-1945. Thesefactors have played a significant role in determining the adopted social policies. Reaching an adequate and qualified population and fightingagainst economic poverty emerged as the main policies. It is seen that theRepublican People's Party (RPP), founder of the Republic and theopposition party, the Progressive Republican Party (PRP), operating in1924-1925 had similar views in terms of family, population and othersocial policies. Both parties regarded increasing population and fightingagainst poverty as urgent needs.In the study, legal regulations and practices promoting the increaseof population were given wide publicity in Turkey which was comprisedof largely a peasant society in the 1920s and 1930s. The policies andpractices promoting the increase of population continued until the 1960s.Some main policies can be listed as; lowering the age of marriage,prohibition of import and marketing of birth control drugs, prohibition ofabortion, some measures to reduce child mortality, awarding mothershaving 6 or more children an medal and allowing them to travel freely onthe trains, establishment of maternity houses by the governor and localadministrations, and getting the population with a Turkish origin livingabroad back to Turkey. Road tax enacted in order to provide villagers’contribution in the construction of the highways in the developing Turkeyis also examined in terms of social policies. Road tax is a practice whichlargely affected the social and economic life of the Anatolian peasants.Those who could not afford it did physical labor instead. Exempting thefamilies with a lot of children from road tax, the state used it as a meansto promote having children.The place of local administrations in the social policy practices asof 1930s is also mentioned in the study. Municipality Law of 1930included some mandatory services such as pharmacies, treatment,orphanages, funeral services, dispensaries, psychiatric hospitals,hospitals, and homes for nursing mothers. They are advanced socialpolicy instruments considering the conditions of the period.The debates on celibacy tax, an interesting proposal reflecting thesocial psychology in 1920-1940 and the extent of demands on increasingpopulation are also evaluated. Celibacy tax proposals were brought toagenda as taxing people at a certain age who are not married without anyexcuse, or taxing them with a higher rate than other taxpayers. Yet, theywere not enacted.Development and modernization policies followed in the early yearsof Republican modernization cannot be considered as successful at thedesired level. Elimination of poverty also failed. It was crucial to ensurepublic participation and their moral and material support for the successof development initiatives. However, the founders of the Republic did notchoose it and adopted an authoritarian way of modernization from thestate towards the society instead.In the considered period, Turkey had the image of a closed societystruggling with its own internal issues. Modernization-developmentinitiatives fulfilled with pressure and compulsion should be regarded asa waste of country’s energy to convert public. Even if some supportivesteps were taken and some legal regulations were made to increase thenumber of children and empower families, desired results were hinderedby the authoritarian policies of the state attempting to convert the public with jacobin methods in the fight against economic weaknesses. As aresult, Anatolian people lived the first quarter-century of the Republicunder administrative-political pressure. State-public disintegration anddistance was experienced instead of state-public integration.The people governing the country under a single-party rule wasteda large part of their energy for the revolutions named as superstructurerevolutions in the areas like law, language, culture, art, history, anddress contrary to the moral and material development goals, and in a waythey caused emotional alienation between the State and the Anatolianpeople.It is impossible to say that the founders established a healthycommunication with the public during the period. For instance, the FreeRepublican Party (FRP) which was made to be established as a controlledopposition party in 1930 as a result of the necessity of supervising theruling party along with the idea that the superstructure revolutions inthe 1920s had been settled was forced to be abolished after realizing thatthe party would get high attention by the public. Yet, the political powerdid not conclude that; the public was tired of pressure and povertyfollowing the abolition of the Free Republican Party and it was necessaryto allow them to participate in the government. Contrary to this, theyfurther increased authoritarianism of the regime deducing that thesociety was not converted enough.Another example showing that citizen satisfaction was notconsidered in terms of social policies in the single-party period is aboutroad tax. Reaching the conclusion that they failed to collect road tax bythe year 1929, the government chose to tighten the collection proceedingsand punish non-payers instead of eliminating th