The Institutional Environment and the Major Actors in the Turkish Political Economy During the Period 1960–2013

The Turkish political economy between 1960 and 2013 lay partway between volatile stability and chaotic flexibility. This is an idiosyncrasy that requires the examination of this country’s institutional environment with reference to its structural adjustments in certain sub-periods. It would, only in this way, be possible to apprehend the long-run evolutionary dynamics of Islam, social democracy and liberalism in terms of the interactions between the actors supporting these paradigms and acting over and under this institutional environment. Underlying is the analytic necessity to comprehend the sub-periodic ebbs and flows within the structural dynamics accruing from previous periods, especially in instances of political or economic volatilities. And such a long-term perspective that presents the evolution of the Turkish political economy in terms of the main turning points of its institutional environment can provide the readers with an overall approach to contextualise short-run fluctuations in this period within systemically explanatory long-run trends.