Introduction

Turkey’s neoliberal economy has evolved into one of the most dynamic among the emerging capitalist societies of the global South since the dramatic 2001 Turkish financial crisis, and it has once again become the darling of international financial circles, as it was in the 1980s. However, in due course, it also turned out to be one of the most debt-laden economies in the emerging market universe, with its persistent current account deficit, reflecting its economy’s continued dependence on hot money flows. Concomitantly, eyebrows have been raised about the nature of its neoliberal transformation, as formal and informal relations between certain business groups and the political authorities have come under scrutiny. A major thrust of such questioning has been, however, to contrast the particularities of the Turkish political economy against an idealized type of market-based order that is assumed to reflect the distinctive features of Western capitalism, particularly in the neoliberal era.