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

Abstract

This article seeks to illustrate a problematic aspect of dominant-contemporary Marxian literature on privatisation: an overgeneralised explanation that shifting structural imperatives of contemporary capitalism, global powers and international financial institutions externally imposed privatisation downwards on all national-domestic political spaces. I suggest an alternative approach that emphasises the complex interplay of three internal factors – class agency, capital accumulation strategies, and state institutions – in mediating and shaping external pressures towards privatisation. Through a study of the Turkish privatisation process in the 1980s and 1990s, I illustrate that even though privatisation was thrust on Turkey by the structural dynamics, the World Bank, the IMF and global capital, its implementation has been contested inside and outside of the state apparatus by the Turkish power bloc (i.e. fractions of capital) within the constitutive context of the prevailing strategies of the domestic capital accumulation regime of Turkey at the time.

The Development of the State‐Owned Enterprises in Turkey: 1923–1980

“…Turgut Özal, Tansu Çiller) in the early 1980s and was supported by the World Bank, the IMF and global capital, its implementation has been contested inside and outside of the state institutional apparatus by the social classes (e.g. capital, labour) that were willing to maintain the SOE duty loss mechanism (see Zaifer, 2020 for more details). Third, and related to the previous point, it warns us that the nationalist developmentalist strategies of the Turkish labour movement and major socialist parties in the 1980s and 1990s that viewed the state as the ally of labour against the privatization pressures of the institutions of neoliberal globalization (e.g.…”

Social Structures of Accumulation in a Semiperiphery Country

“…Problems with nonsynchronization continued during the 1990s. For example, in addition to the fact that the privatizations could not be realized as desired (see Kılıç, Özdemir, and Yavuz 2020; Zaifer 2020), the mass protests by the working class in the early 1990s succeeded in restoring wages in real terms (Boratav and Yeldan 2006: 446). However, this did not mean a step back from neoliberalism.…”

Extractivism and Labour Control: Reflections of Turkey’s ‘Coal Rush’ in Local Labour Regimes

“…Privatization of State Economic Enterprises (SEEs) has been on the policy agenda of neoliberal governments in Turkey since the mid-1980s. However, they faced strong impediments such as legal and institutional constraints, opposition within the parliament or government, and popular resistance from different segments of the society, including certain fractions of big capital (Angın and Bedirhanoğlu, 2012; Öniş, 2011; Zaifer, 2020). Large-scale privatizations in Turkey correspond to the AKP governments and since the early 2000s, privatizations have been central for the accumulation strategies of all fractions of the power bloc (Zaifer, 2018: 819).…”