Crises as Driving Forces of Neoliberal “Trasformismo”: The Contours of the Turkish Political Economy since the 2000s

Abstract

Writing nearly three decades ago, a prominent scholar of Turkish political economy was expressing a feeling widely reflecting the state of affairs at the time “that Turkish studies were excessively insular” so as to drive home the point that there is a need for establishing closer links with the theoretical debates pertaining to developmental issues so “that students of social, political and economic change in the Third World could benefit from a knowledge of the Turkish example” (Keyder 1987: iv). More recently, it has been purported that “Turkish experience provides valuable lessons for other emerging markets in particular and developing countries in general” (Onis and Senses 2009: 313). No doubt, the academic interest in Turkey has soared particularly with the coming to power of a political party, Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), with its Turkish acronym that kept baffling the observers of the Turkish case with its style of ruling during the last 13 years. It is indeed remarkable that there has been a proliferation of studies undertaken by both Turkish and non-Turkish scholars with a quest to account for the dramatic changes that have been experienced in terms of state-society and/or state-economy relations over the last few decades, as the country has been portrayed not only as an “emerging market economy” but also as a regional and global power. Yet, it is debatable whether this rise of interest has paved the ground for putting the Turkish example in a broader comparative framework so as to conclude that the declared intention of earlier studies has been duly accomplished. Nor is it plausible to suggest that a critical political economy perspective has come to characterize most of the recent studies which claim to focus on “the changed political-economic character of Turkey” (Barkey 2011), as it has been described, allegedly, “from being one of the world’s sealed off societies” to become “one of its more open and penetrated” (Park 2012: 207).