Internationalization of the Turkish State

Turkey has been undergoing a neoliberal transformation since the 1980s. It has opened its economy to international competition through diminishing administrative barriers to foreign direct investment, accelerated the privatization program, and created an independent Central Bank. This reform process is neither the result of market constraints nor does it stem from domestic political institutions. It is also not an outcome of an ideational process that guides policymakers for following a specific path that is determined by neo- liberal ideas as suggested by constructivists. This book highlights that existing studies on the transformation of states under global markets have failed to problematize the social forces' establishment of neo-liberal hegemony within a broader historical structure. Drawing upon a neo- Gramscian framework, this book has demonstrated that the internationalization of the Turkish state has been carried out through a hegemonic program of social restructuring engineered by transnational fractions of Turkish businessmen and technocrats and implemented by successive governments since 1980s.