I think there's a complication you're pushing past here. Historically, all industrialization has involved either being Europe, or engaging economically with Europe. The need to engage with European institutions, and the tendency of local leaders to try to replicate those institutions in an attempt to more quickly copy and compete with European technology, may well have crushed out alternate paths to industrialization.
Firstly, the European experience of studying by us thoroughly, from beginning to peak. Other regions were either just beginning or were far from it. Therefore, ignoring the European experience leads to speculation. Secondly, the development of colonialism is inevitable, which will lead to the invasion of Europeans into Asia and America, which will inevitably affect the development of local societies. And a world without European Colonies is already a very "soft" Alternative History. Thirdly, this is still a reactionary way, to single out different cultures into independent entities, like paralleled universes with their own laws of physics, here the emphasis should be on general laws - although these laws are not absolute, but relative.
Korean industrial development
As far as I remember, South Korea is a classic country of neoliberal capitalism, where the economy is controlled by corporations. Peru in many ways is also slightly different from other states. Moreover, both Korea and Peru are products of colonization - that is, not a very good example.
Although Ataturk's government introduced a number of beneficial and progressive reforms to Turkish law, society, and governance, it also had a number of downsides. Ataturk very sharply broke away from Turkey's Islamic and Ottoman past to create a new Turkish identity that would be secular and heavily European in inspiration. The latter choice was perhaps most notably embodied in adopting a Latin-based script for the Turkish language rather than an Arabic-based one as it had been in Ottoman times.
You know - in fact, we are talking about an Islamic society, where various spheres of society are controlled by clerics. So I think that Ataturk achieved outstanding results, and was on the right path (even taking into account the genocide of the Kurds - unfortunately, a bourgeois-democratic revolution took place in Turkey, not a socialist one). And it must be said that despite the reactionary government, Turkey as a whole is a progressive country relative to many countries in the Middle East.
Much like Reza Shah in Iran: Ataturk's reforms and programmes of modernisation were not democratic in their implementation.
Oh - just do not compare them, this is a monstrous mistake. Mustafa Kemal was a cruel, narrow-minded bourgeois mindset, but still an effective politician and revolutionary. Reza Pahlavi was a mistake, even against the background of his father - not only was he a cruel asshole showing his luxury, but he also sold out to the British and Americans. As for domestic policy, its modernization has not advanced further than Tehran. Despite the fact that they like to show us photographs of female students who do not wear the hijab, the life of the majority of the population outside the big cities has changed little. Add to this huge social stratification. In fact, paradoxically, it was the Islamists who played a modernizing role in Iranian history (as opposed to, say, Afghanistan) - they established industrial management, increased social mobility, and created a civil nation. Actually, this is the source of the current crisis - the reactionary ideology does not meet the requirements of modernization (I am sure that the percentage of women who smoke is higher than in the Developed Countries).
This is not correct. There has been one industrial revolution but there has been plenty of industrialization and industry outside of Europe- Mughal Bengal notably was one of the most productive places in the world before British de-industrializing and economically protectionist policies steadily reduced its potency. Notably a large amount of the traits of an early industrial economy were present such as intensified urbanism as surplus production permitted more and more people to move into the townships and cities to work on mass-scale manufactories.
Urbanization would still require mass movements and the abolition of social privileges in order to increase social mobility. Here, by the way, a problem arises that interferes with the prosperity of India - the caste system. Some of my colleagues, it is true, argue that the caste industrialization option is not incredible, but even in this case, a shift in the center of power from kshatriyas to merchants is outlined. In addition, I'm not sure that modern India can be taken as an example - for its social structure was cemented by the British colonialists.
However, an industrial revolution as we know it has only happened once and its exact causes and origins remain something of a mystery to be argued over- I believe @Admiral Skippy has much more to say about this, since it's with him I've had the majority of these discussions and he has notably read actual literature on the industrial revolution.
In The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, Professor Robert Allen pointed out that the emergence of Chinese industry was held back by factor price ratios. In England, there was expensive labor and relatively cheap coal. In China, which had already switched to coal at that time, it was the other way around, so cheap labor did not stimulate innovation that could replace it, and expensive coal stimulated energy savings, but not labor.
Weirdly enough, I think we miss that a lot of historical "modernising" leaders who imitate "the West" in lieu of their own societies actually... kind of hate their countries in some respects. Peter the Great in his reforms of Russia strongly rejected traditional Russian culture, religion, and government and eagerly copied European institutions wholesale in his programmes of development. And he did so with a zeal that suggests something more than merely a pragmatic ruler who embraces reform as a means of enhancing state authority. And this is even more acute in countries that would have been regarded as "backwards" or "inferior" or both compared to white Europeans. The societies that are exposed to these kinds of attitudes often internalise them in certain ways.
Do you know who blamed the modernizers for this? Moscow boyars, samurai, and Islamic muftis - that is, representatives of the reactionary forces of society who would prefer the old order to survive. It is like listening to the words of a representative of the French counter-revolutionary emigration about the horrors of the Great Terror. Yes, and they themselves were not great patriots, and gladly collaborated with foreign invaders - for example, British rule in India was based on the rajahs and brahmanas. If, say, an analogue of Peter the Great appeared in the Deccan, they would have screamed about the death of "people's identity", although he had defended national independence. Besides, I'll tell you frankly - it's all a form (the reforms of Peter the Great were only one of the stages of the establishment of capitalism in Russia - not the first, and not the last). If Japan had no need to compete with Europe, then they would not have to wear European uniforms, but they would still have to fight the resistance of the samurai and develop parliamentism.
