ABSTRACT
Introduction Inherited from the Ottoman Empire the Republic of Turkey had established a strong, centralized, and highly bureaucratic state. Although political elites of the early Republican era introduced several institutional reforms in order to reach modern Western standards, the patrimonial mentality and strong state characterized the political culture in the country throughout the years (Heper, 1977; Mardin, 1991; Göle, 1997; Nişancı, 2002; Yıldırım, 2012). In the early 2000s the modernization project gained momentum when Turkey was given European Union (EU) candidacy status in Helsinki in 1999. Coupled with demands coming from the IMF and World Bank following the 2001 financial crisis the EU accession process has resulted in adoption of an impressive amount of political and economic reforms, which were expected to strengthen legal rules and procedures and enhance opportunities for doing business in Turkey (Özel & Atiyas, 2011, p. 57). Yet the empirical evidence suggests that substantial changes that have taken place in the last decade hardly eliminated the institutional ambiguity and patrimonial practices. Instead, they fostered new rent-seeking coalitions between the political elites and various capital groups while formal institutions have increasingly become subject to detrimental behavior of domestic actors.
