The privatization experience in Turkey during the 1980s

Abstract

Privatization, aimed at decreasing the role of the state in the economy and politics, has been a fashionable policy tool during the 1980s both in many countries and Turkey. As far as the Turkish case is concerned, although the idea of privatization has been on the agenda from time to time since the early years of the Republic (established in 1923), the policy has gained prominence and started to be implemented in the post-1980 period, being a part of the 'liberal’ economic policies of the Motherland Party (MP) governments. In this respect, the primary purpose of this study is that of evaluating the privatization experience of Turkey in the said period by trying to show the fluctuation in the policies and inconsistencies in implementation, and attempting at accounting for them.