The economic transformation of Turkey since 1980

As prime minister from 1983, Turgut Özal oversaw many of the reforms that opened up Turkey's economy to free-market forces. Hürriyet Photo

'The Economic Transformation of Turkey: Neoliberalism and State Intervention' by Nilgün Önder (IB Tauris, $110, 288 pages)

In 1957 the economic historian Karl Polanyi observed that the "road to the free market was opened and kept open by an enormous increase in continuous, centrally organized and controlled interventionism." Turkey since the 1980s demonstrates the paradox that the opening of markets often goes hand in hand with a strengthening of the state's iron grip. The reforms that opened up the Turkish economy to international forces after the 1980 coup were pushed by an oppressive, nationalistic military junta and later eagerly followed by civilian governments. Thirty years later, the situation in Turkey today shows that an open economy and a liberal state are far from inevitable counterpoints.

That insight is at the core of this study by Nilgün Önder, an assistant professor at the University of Regina. "The Economic Transformation of Turkey" describes the transformation of Turkey's economy from 1980 through the 1990s and beyond. It is a fairly orthodox leftist, head-shaking critique of the more baleful effects of the reforms, but the points it makes are worth repeating. In the 1980s, "Turkish state intervention in the economy did not actually decline; rather, its direction changed," Önder writes. Through a systematic centralization of policy powers, there was a "reinforcement and expansion of [the state's] coercive powers over society." Rather than retreating in classic liberal fashion, the state's role simply shifted in favor of "accumulation functions at the expense of its social welfare role." The state was transformed from a protector of Turkish society and economy from global market forces to a facilitator of their integration into the...

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