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New Capitalism in Turkey: The Relationship between Politics, Religion and Business
New Capitalism in Turkey explores the changing relationship between politics, religion and business through an analysis of the contemporary Turkish business environment. This book focuses on the developments that have transformed the economic, political and cultural coordinates of business activity; led to new forms of interest representation; and changed the relationship between government and business in Turkey in the post-1980 period. Ayşe Buğra and Osman Savaşkan argue that political action plays a crucial role in shaping the configuration of the business community, influencing the patterns of business development, and informing the emergence of rival models of capitalist development and political change endorsed by different groups of entrepreneurs. Moreover, the book explores the idea that whilst the use of religion as a strategic resource by some business associations serves to create bonds of trust and solidarity among their members, it also contributes to the polarization of the business community. This interdisciplinary book will be an invaluable resource for academics, graduate students and researchers interested in political economy, political science, sociology, economic history, and organization studies. It will also appeal to journalists and business people, especially those investing or planning to invest in Turkey or the Middle East.
- GenresEconomics
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
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February 27, 2025
Ayse Bugra, for all of those who don't know yet, is a must-read to understand Turkey. Her work gives us a better analysis in understanding the power dynamics through the development of capitalist market economy in Turkey. Devlet ve Isadamlari (loosely translated as State and Businessman) had given us an understading of the difficulties in creating cooperation between the state, capitalist and the workers. It contrasts how Japon and S.Korea achieved this cooperation (mostly leaving workers behind but still being able to create a functional environment for investment). We saw how the crony nature of Turkish Capitalist occurred as a reaction to the inability to create a long-term relationship with the state and needed to produce a informal relationship with the whichever government ruled at the time. This is symbiotic paradoxe where capitalist try to grow through the government and government gets legitimacy and power by ruling over capitalist in a short term friendship. Governments fall, crises and riots occur, coup d'etats take place and we finally come to our contemporary starting point. Here Ayse Bugra shows us the parallels and diffferences of AKP (turkish acronmys of Justice and Development Party of Erdogan) and its relationship with the Capitalist class.
Like all previous governments, AKP created its own capitalist class. Most grew through government backed monopolies by trading foreign goods with high turnover in Turkey like Koc and Sabanci (very respectable Turkish Capitalist groups) who are relatively secular, since they inherited characteristics from the government that created them, CHP, the party Ataturk founded. AKP, playing the game with the same strategy had a few slicks uo their sleves. They did the same thing, created a Capitalist Class with their pseudo-islamic and pseudo-conservative values.
However as we can see from the book by consolidating more and more power by continiously creating weird and unsual coalitions (I use the terms to express consolidating different voters, not sharing government) AKP become the absolute power. Anyone who wanted to make money needed Erdogan, le nouveau roi de soleil.
Erdogans experience in his time as Istanbuls new and upcoming mayor was not in vain. He knew the nitty gritty of construction rent and this book gives us a detailed history of the PPP's.
Construction boom, health becoming a commodity, state channeling the funding for projects, giving foreign credit and internalizing the risk and effectively creating money to its own capitalist class. Tradional Capitalist jumped on board from the get go, they were creating by this game, they knew how to play it.
But now the pie has become smaller and smaller. Exploting workers is not enough to grow Turkey's wealth. You cannot understand the current Turkish policy without having the lenses of this political economy. Bugra's Polanian insticts give us a major clue, the duality of government/private analysis falls short, one needs to understand the concept of reciproxity to understand most developing nations, but more so for AKP and contemporary Turkey.
If my understading of Turkey is correct, not much will change after AKP. Sure we will leave the middle-ages that warped our world in to an islamic parody, but we won't create a sustainable cooperative relationship between the state, capital and labor.
Like all previous governments, AKP created its own capitalist class. Most grew through government backed monopolies by trading foreign goods with high turnover in Turkey like Koc and Sabanci (very respectable Turkish Capitalist groups) who are relatively secular, since they inherited characteristics from the government that created them, CHP, the party Ataturk founded. AKP, playing the game with the same strategy had a few slicks uo their sleves. They did the same thing, created a Capitalist Class with their pseudo-islamic and pseudo-conservative values.
However as we can see from the book by consolidating more and more power by continiously creating weird and unsual coalitions (I use the terms to express consolidating different voters, not sharing government) AKP become the absolute power. Anyone who wanted to make money needed Erdogan, le nouveau roi de soleil.
Erdogans experience in his time as Istanbuls new and upcoming mayor was not in vain. He knew the nitty gritty of construction rent and this book gives us a detailed history of the PPP's.
Construction boom, health becoming a commodity, state channeling the funding for projects, giving foreign credit and internalizing the risk and effectively creating money to its own capitalist class. Tradional Capitalist jumped on board from the get go, they were creating by this game, they knew how to play it.
But now the pie has become smaller and smaller. Exploting workers is not enough to grow Turkey's wealth. You cannot understand the current Turkish policy without having the lenses of this political economy. Bugra's Polanian insticts give us a major clue, the duality of government/private analysis falls short, one needs to understand the concept of reciproxity to understand most developing nations, but more so for AKP and contemporary Turkey.
If my understading of Turkey is correct, not much will change after AKP. Sure we will leave the middle-ages that warped our world in to an islamic parody, but we won't create a sustainable cooperative relationship between the state, capital and labor.
Displaying 1 of 1 review