Politics of real estate internationalization: Contested liberalization in Turkey

Abstract

This study explores the slow progress of liberalization of real estate internationalization (REI) in Turkey. Drawing on insights from cultural political economy (CPE), it builds on a qualitative analysis of parliamentary deliberations and argues that real estate acquisition by foreigners in Turkey was highly contentious because of the struggle between competing imaginaries on liberalization, with the neoliberal-transformative imaginaries of the ANAP, the AKP, and their affiliates in the tourism and construction sectors on one side and the national-defensive imaginaries of opposition parties and the bureaucratic elite on the other. By forming a coalition with the Constitutional Court, opposition parties were successful in preventing the adoption of neoliberal-transformative imaginaries for almost thirty years. This policy area could be liberalized only after the 2010 referendum, which allowed the government to restructure the composition of the Court, leading to executive aggrandizement.