Globalization, crisis and right-wing populists in the Global South: the cases of India and Turkey

Crisis of capitalism and cycles of right‐wing populism in contemporary Turkey: The making and unmaking of Erdoğanist hegemony

“…As privatisation revenues began to decline after 2013-due to the shortage of public assets left to privatise-the AKP began to engage in more radical "creative destruction" of the urban landscape in an unprecedented manner, such as extravagant airports (not only the Istanbul airport which became the biggest in Europe but also in Anatolia), transcontinental bridges (such as the "Third Bosphorus Bridge"), expensive highway rings, and the forthcoming "Canal Istanbul project," (which Erdogan calls his "crazy project") aiming to build a second "Bosphorus" strait parallel to the existing one, turning much of Istanbul into an island. These creative destructions were not only examples of conspicuous consumption through which Erdogan tried to boost the prestige of himself and the "new Turkey" he was building, but they were also linked to a specific mode of capital accumulation that aimed to redistribute wealth from the AKP controlled central and local governments' assets to private companies close to Erdogan and the AKP (Kumral, 2022).…”

“…The AKP's neoliberalism was not a replica of the neoliberal models implemented in the Global North because it simultaneously expanded many welfare and social assistance programmes (Figure 2). AKP's neoliberalism took place together with aid for the poor, free public services, and direct cash transfers to the urban and rural poor (Bahçe & Köse, 2017; Kumral, 2022; Özdemir, 2020). During the AKP era, the social security system was reformed so that it included the precariously and informally employed and unemployed sections of the society (Özdemir, 2020, p. 253).…”

“…These statistics might help us explain how the AKP managed to keep the support of the lower‐income groups, economically inactive populations, the unemployed, the rural population, and women (especially economically inactive housewives) despite its neoliberal reforms (also see Gürel et al, 2019; Kumral, 2022). The AKP also attracted Kurdish votes through its pragmatic “Kurdish opening” move.…”

“…To better understand the size of capital accumulation linked to these mega‐projects and the extraordinary centralisation of capital that emerges as a consequence, consider this: The World's top ten private sponsors of public infrastructure projects from 1990 to 2020 include five Turkish companies at the top of the list, publicly known as “the gang of five,” all of which started their accumulation only after the AKP came to power (Kumral, 2022, pp. 19–20).…”

Politicized Megaprojects and Public Sector Interventions: Mass Consent Under Neoliberal Statism

“…The construction industry is one of the contributors to the extreme concentration of wealth (Bartu Candan and Kolluoğlu, 2008; Geniş, 2007; Karaman, 2013; Karatepe, 2020; Kuyucu and Ünsal, 2010). According to a recent World Bank report, five AKP-connected private companies are among the world’s top 10 sponsors of public infrastructure (Kumral, 2022). But the construction sector also creates jobs and housing for millions, and therefore popular support (Demiralp, 2018; Karatepe, 2020; Kumral, 2022), as noted above.…”