SOAS Research Online

Abstract

In Turkey, as in all emerging capitalist societies, the transition to and consolidation of neoliberalism has entailed the simultaneous financial transformation of the state apparatus. This chapter explains the qualitative break that occurred in 2001. It explores the wider context of Turkish authorities internalizing international best practices as 'emerging financial strategy' to help encourage finance-led capitalist consolidation. The chapter focuses on the deliberate internal institutional restructuring and empowerment of Turkey's financial apparatus. It also focuses on the build up of the state's material capacity to manage finance in contemporary capitalism. From a Marxian-inspired political economic interpretative lens, these historic changes reflect a class-based strategy of development and form of capital accumulation premised on privileging the needs of foreign and domestic capital over those of Turkey's working classes and peasantry. Privatization, understood technically as reducing the state's presence in the economy, in Turkey began to take root under Turgut ozal's Administration in the 1980s.