Fikret Şenses

The Turkish export boom: Just reward or just lucky?

Abstract After adopting outward-oriented policies like exchange rate depreciation, export subsidies, and import liberalization, Turkey experienced an export boom in the 1980s and beyond. This paper attempts to measure the extent to which the boom was due to the policies undertaken, and the extent to which it was due to external circumstances such as the Iran-Iraq war, changes in consumer incomes in Turkeys markets in Europe and the Middle East, and rainfall fluctuations, Regression analyses with annual data for 1966–1991 suggest that the boom was indeed mostly the result of policy, with rising incomes in Europe after 1985 being the strongest of the external influences on export growth.

Structural Adjustment Policies and Employment in Turkey

Much of the recent debate on the labor market issues of developing countries has revolved around the interaction of the labor market with stabilization and structural adjustment policies, introduced mostly in conjunction with the IMF and the World Bank. In particular, there is a growing body of literature on the interaction between structural adjustment policies and employment performance in these countries.According to the dominant view in this literature, the favorable employment effects of these policies stem basically from the shift of industrial trade strategy from state-led import substitution towards market-based export orientation.

An Assessment of the Pattern of Turkish Manufactured Export Growth in the 1980s and its Prospects

Turkey’s trade and industrialization policies until 1980 were characterized by strong inward-orientation. All indices of trade orientation put her well behind cross-country norms with exports in 1979 constituting only 3.2 per cent of GNP. Although a wide range of export promotion policies were in operation since 1963, the trade regime remained heavily biased against exports. Consequently, exports were dependent on a handful of traditional commodities like cotton, tobacco, hazelnuts, dried figs and raisins while manufactured exports constituted only 27.4 per cent of the total as late as 1979.

Turkey's experience with neoliberal policies since 1980 in retrospect and prospect

This paper provides a critical assessment of Turkeys economic performance under the neoliberal economic policies which have been instrumental in generating a profound transformation in its socioeconomic structure since 1980. The paper draws special attention to the governments loss of policy autonomy and the democratic deficit at the initial and implementation stages of this transformation. It then evaluates Turkeys economic performance on the basis of indicators with medium and long-term impacts, such as investment, saving, industrialization, unemployment, and income distribution. This assessment shows that the neoliberal model has failed to fulfill its promises, with the Turkish economy failing to achieve performance equal to that under the previous import-substitution strategy or in comparable countries. The paper then identifies the main problem areas confronting the economy: the current account deficit, the labor market, insufficient industrial progress and income distribution, and poverty. To solve these problems, it calls for both a radical rethinking of the neoliberal policy regime and for proactive state intervention to stimulate saving and investment as part of a new development strategy, giving primary importance to industrialization, employment creation, and more equitable income distribution.

Missing Links in Poverty Analysis in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization: Some Lessons from Turkey

The main objective of this essay is to point out the missing links between neoliberalism on the one hand, and a comprehensive analysis of poverty and effective policies to tackle it, on the other. After identifying the main channels through which neoliberalism affects poverty, I will draw attention to the inadequacy of the neoliberal approach in coming to terms with the main reasons behind poverty, as well as in developing a comprehensive and effective mechanism for its alleviation. I emphasize the role of international institutions in determining the dominant development discourse and changes in the importance given to the issue of poverty over time. The essay links the ineffectiveness of existing poverty alleviation policies to distributional imbalances at both the global and domestic levels. Against the background of the main constraints and opportunities for effective poverty alleviation policies in individual countries, it emphasizes the need for a poverty alleviation strategy as an integral part of a broader development strategy and identifies its main premises. It calls for action on the academic, domestic and international fronts and stresses the central role of the state, a more balanced reliance on domestic and international markets, emphasis on productive employment creation, the development of effective redistribution mechanisms, and the creation of effective domestic and international constituencies as the main components of such a strategy.

Can Effective Industrial Restructuring be Compatible with Market- Oriented Structural Adjustment Policies? The Evidence from Turkey

One of the main objectives of the Stabilization and Structural Adjustment Program (SSAP) introduced in Turkey in January 1980 was to transform the industrial trade strategy from archetypal import-substitution to export-orientation and to attain a higher level of integration with the international economy through market-based policies. International financial institutions like the IMF and, in particular, the World Bank have been closely involved in this process. Apart from a number of stand-by agreements with the IMF, Turkey received five successive structural adjustment loans from the World Bank during 1980-84 with their conditionality extending into a wide range of spheres like import liberalization, export promotion, and financial liberalization. Not only was Turkey one of the first to conclude such agreements with the World Bank, it was also identified as one of the countries complying with their provisions with “low slippage”.3 Even when there were no formal agreements, successive governments since 1980 have had very close and amicable relations with both of these Bretton Woods institutions.

Book Review: Global Management, Local Labour: Turkish Workers and Modern Industry

This book examines the extent to which modern management practices developed in industrialized countries such as total quality management, kaizen, quality circles, suggestion schemes, total productivity maintenance and just-in-time have penetrated into the Turkish setting. It provides a detailed account of the various aspects of the experience of workers in selected modern manufacturing enterprises. It delves further into the gender, age and ethnicity aspects of Turkey’s industrial relations and makes interesting observations about both management and trade unions. It tackles these issues at the level of individual plants where they are most visible. The basic research for the study was conducted in 1999 and 2000 in seven plants in Bursa, Bolu and Gebze located in the industrial heartland of Turkey. It was based on interviews with a total of 356 production workers and 353 replies received to a questionnaire sent to managers and white-collar staff, and interviews with directors and high-level managers in the seven plants. Three of the plants were in white goods, two in textiles and two in cars. The research design is heavily biased in favour of the most advanced industrial region and towards relatively large and modern plants. Six of the seven plants were export-oriented, four were joint ventures with large foreign multinational corporations, two were owned by one of the largest domestic conglomerates and only one was a large independent Turkish company. The selected plants had at least 500 employees, which easily place them in the ‘very large’ category in an industrial structure characterized by notoriously small average establishment size. Employees working in these factories, compared with the profile of Turkish labour in general, were relatively more educated and had more urban and working-class backgrounds. The book consists of five parts and 10 chapters. After a general discussion in the first part of workers’ perceptions of working in these factories and their working conditions, the second part considers the different patterns of work experience in terms of gender and ethnicity. The third part examines how managers cope with global management methods and adapt them to local conditions and provides some useful information about how workers regard their managers. Part 4 is mainly devoted to a detailed examination of the major trade union active in the plants. Finally, Part 5 conducts a prospective evaluation of workers’ perceptions against the background of the lack of development of civil society and democratic institutions in Turkey.