Political economy of transformation of capital structure in Turkey: A historical and comparative view

Abstract

Comprehensive insight into the transformation of the Turkish capital structure implies understanding the historical basis of the issue, which should first include center-periphery relations that arose mainly as the historical tension between two blocs of Turkish political-economic forces. In this way, one may follow the footsteps of the breakthrough period initiated mainly by the Özal era in the early 1980s, whose main policies were aimed at effecting a transformation grounded on political and economic liberalism and its direct/indirect reflections for a newly emerging capital group mainly based in Anatolia, along with the statistical rise of some new local cities/regions/corporations, and its political-economic content. In this framework, the two main interest groups of industrial and business associations, Turkish Industry and Business Association (TUSIAD) and Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (MUSIAD), appear more clearly in this historical process as representatives of the two different political-economic factions in terms of magnitude, volume, regional/geographic basis, mental and cultural codes/roots, and, hence, differentiated vision and structural realities.