The Turkish Bourgeoisie under Neoliberalism

The Turkish bourgeoisie as a class was instrumental in the shift into neoliberalism in 1980 and succeeded in controlling the overall orientation of economic policies up until the end of the decade. Coalition governments, which followed, witnessed a drift into populism and generated intra-class conflicts within the ranks of the bourgeoisie. Solutions to accommodate distributional trade-offs with neoliberalism turned out to be temporary. After 2002, the stability of Justice and Development Party/Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP)’s one-party-rule was welcomed by all segments of the bourgeoisie since it immediately and fully committed itself to the neoliberal model. However, new problems emerged as AKP gradually moved into rent-generation and appropriation specific to the Turkish variant of neoliberalism. Extreme patterns and magnitudes of corruption followed. The degree of maturity of the Turkish bourgeoisie is being tested on how far it will respond to the tendency to participate in and share the spoils.