ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the interplay of policy regimes, external forces, institutions, and crises in the evolution of Turkish political economy. Following a brief overview of Turkey’s state-led development strategy in the 1950s and 1960s and efforts at liberalisation in the 1980s and 1990s, the chapter focuses on the post-2002 AKP period. Initial successes during this period proved unsustainable and Turkey, once branded a leading emerging power, has over the past decade experienced intensified foreign capital-dependence, sluggish growth, institutional degeneration, and recently severe macroeconomic instability. With the AKP’s authoritarian brand of neoliberal populism firmly entrenched, Turkey’s long-term development prospects in an ever more challenging global economic context remain bleak.
