The Political Economy of Privatization in Turkey: An Evaluation

Turkish experience with public private partnerships in infrastructure: Opportunities and challenges

“…Line ministries were concerned about losing their influence on PPPs falling in their Fourteen contracts worth $22 billion were in the energy sector, while $12.5 billion were invested in the transport and $100 million in the water and sewerage sector. 4 See Güran (2011) and Onis (2011) among others and references cited therein. In this context, in its peer review report of Turkey regarding public procurement and concessions/PPPs, SIGMA (2008) asserted that the term privatization was mostly used in Turkey when, in reality, the activity concerned qualified as the award of a PPP or a concession contract.…”

Variegated Privatisation: Class, Capital Accumulation and State in Turkey’s Privatisation Process in the 1980s and 1990s

“…I begin with institutionalist approaches, which mainly draw on a legal and institutional framework of each country to explain the success of privatisation – the argument that what prevents the implementation of privatisation, and what enables it, were institutions: the absence of strong institutions where privatisation has not occurred, and presence of strong institutions where privatisation has occurred (Atiyas, 2009; Bortolotti and Perotti, 2007; Güran, 2011; Weizsacker et al, 2005). Yet many of these institutionalist approaches see institutions as the final and determinant context.…”

“…First, external dynamics have been actively involved in Turkey’s privatisation process since the beginning to push forward with privatisation. Second, the Turkish privatisation experiment during the 1980s and 1990s has been so limited compared with the privatisation records of other emerging countries – while the total privatisation to GDP ratios were approximately 25% in Portugal, 11% in the UK, and 7% in Greece, this ratio was only 0.2% in Turkey (Güran, 2011: 23). Finally, a study of privatisation in Turkey provides a valuable research setting to explore why and how privatisation remained so limited despite external pressures to privatise as rapidly as possible.…”

The Acceleration of Privatization: Understanding State, Power Bloc, and Capital Accumulation in Turkey

“…Employing a Marxian analytical framework, this article seeks to explain the post-2001 acceleration of privatization in Turkey. From the onset, I challenge the dominant institutionalist interpretations that mainly draw on a legal and institutional framework to explain the success of privatization—the argument that what prevented privatization before 2001, and what enabled privatization after 2001, were institutions: the absence of strong institutions before 2001 and the presence of strong institutions after 2001 (e.g., Atiyas 2009; Ertuna 1998; Fıçıcı 2001; Güran 2011; Öniş 2011). Yet many of these accounts see institutions as the final and determinant context.…”