ABSTRACT
It is argued that direct state intervention overcame the 2008 financial crisis in Turkey as in many countries. It brought austerity measures (bailout packages) to the agenda in many countries. In Turkey, the crisis heralded new comprehensive legal arrangements overlapping with the AKP’s political agenda. The revival on the world stage of the strong-state to manage the crisis has revived debate on approaches to the structure and role of the state. The state-centred approach as expressed in the concepts of “new-developmentalist state” and “authoritarianism” is one such with a considerable number of supporters in Turkey. As opposed to this prevailing master narrative, this study operationalizes “state as a social relation” and discusses whether this direct state-intervention emerged as a response to manage crisis-driven social relations or as a deviation from neoliberalism.
