State, Crisis, Class: The Politics of Economic Restructuring in Turkey in the 2000s

This thesis analyses the politics of economic restructuring in Turkey in the 2000s under the governments of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi – Justice and Development Party) that came to power in 2002. The work contextualises the restructuring of state-capital-labour relations against the background of the military coup in 1980, the crisis-ridden transformations of Turkish state in the 1990s and in particular against the background of the economic crisis of 2001. The thesis assesses the conventional accounts of the AKP government, which see it as the government that successfully overcame the turmoils of the 1990s, led the Turkish economy onto a growth path during the 2000s, and established a rules-based, democratic form of government. In distinction, the thesis argues that the AKP government set upon a market liberalising economic policy that was started in the 1980s. The analysis of the restructuring of labour relations in Turkey under the AKP shows great continuity with earlier policy objectives. In this context, the thesis argues that the success of the AKP government has to do with both the political consequences of the crisis of 2001, which delegitimised the then parties of government, and the economic consequences of credit-driven global economy that supported the Turkish economic growth. The crash in 2008 put a hold on this and the thesis analyses the trajectory of the post-2007 AKP government as crisis-ridden. The theoretical conception of the thesis problematises approaches that rely on the state-market dichotomy that is inherent in the discipline of International Political Economy (IPE). The thesis develops the approach associated with the Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE), which argued for an internal relationship between state and market, conceiving of both as distinct forms of capitalist social relations. The work, thus, conceptualises the developments of the Turkish political economy as continuous efforts in restructuring labour relations for the purpose of removing barriers to capital accumulation and achieving free economy.