Turgut Özal's views on the relationship between politics and economy

Abstract

The subject of the thesis is to demonstrate the nature of the aggregation of political and economic power by a Turkish political leader, Turgut Ozal, the then Prime Minister (1983-89), on the economy in Turkey during the 1980s. The study tests the assumption that "the economy is above everything" for him as the main determinant of Turkish political life since 1983. In Turkey, economy has become a fashionable issue among the politicians and the Turkish people since the beginning of the 1980s. After 1983, the then Prime Minister Turgut Ozal was the dominant actor acting as a sole authority on the economy. He was both a decision-maker and a policy-maker on political and economic issues. Moreover, in the international relations arena, he constructed tight relations between Turkey and the rest of the world on the basis of economic affinities. Consequently, the conclusion affirms the assumption that the economic restructuration is above everything for Ozal.