ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the impact of Turkey's financial transformation since the 1980s on domestic Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It argues that in order to integrate the SMEs into their sectoral networks, the Turkish state, as the risk-taker of last resort, provided financial support for the SMEs. The chapter describes the formation of the Turkish business community in the post-war era until the 1980s. It discusses the initial adjustment attempt of SME finance through Turkey's transition to neoliberalism from the early 1980s to 2001. The chapter focuses on the emergence of innovative SMEs finance sources channelled through public and private resources in the post-2001 period. It also focuses on the impact of the 2008 crisis on SME finance. The chapter looks at the stock of these policies by evaluating the available Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey dataset of manufacturing sector balance sheets across firms of different sizes.
