Editor's introduction: Turkey's experience with neoliberal policies and globalization since 1980

Abstract

The six interesting papers in this Special Issue offer new insights on and aim at an overall evaluation of Turkey’s experience with neoliberal policies and globalization since 1980. The first four of these were presented and discussed in a conference organized by the Chair for Contemporary Turkish Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and New Perspectives on Turkey in October 2011. Asaf Savas Akat, Caglar Keyder, Dani Rodrik, Zafer Yenal and Deniz Yukseker also contributed to that conference and the lively discussion for which we thank them. The shift to neoliberal policies around the world began in the 1970s as the Bretton Woods system was disintegrating and the developed economies on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean were searching for policies to deal with the combination of stagnation and inflation. The Thatcher government in the UK and the Reagan administration in the US led the movement away from Keynesian interventionism and towards a greater emphasis on markets in both macro and micro economic policy. In the international economy, neoliberal policies began to reduce the barriers in the way of trade and, even more importantly, the controls on international capital flows. These changes ushered in a new era known as the second wave of globalization, after the first wave that prevailed during the century before World War I.