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Contention during economic crises: Turkey in 2001 and 2008
Paper submitted to ECPR General Conference in Reykjavik 2011
Kıvanç Atak, Researcher
Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University
Institute
e-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: In both 2001 and 2008, Turkey has gone through the
consequences of economic crises; one
rooted domestically, the other globally. Protest mobilization in
the course of first term was massive,
geographically diffused, and at times radicalized. Throughout
the second period, on the contrary, social
unrest was not as eruptive as in the previous case. This paper
first looks at the economic narratives of the
two crises in terms of their social impact on the population. By
way of comparison, I problematize
economic accounts for the different levels of protest activity
and rather focus on political processes to
address the question. I argue that a) the fragmentation and
division among the ruling elites, and b)
scandalous corruption cases having a direct effect on people’s
everyday concerns have articulated material
grievances into political ones, contributing to the growing
social unrest resulted in large-scale mobilization
in 2000/2001.
Keywords: economic crisis, protest mobilization, divided elites,
corruption, Turkey
In 2001, Turkey experienced one of the most devastating economic
crisis throughout its
republican history. Banks were collapsed leaving all the savings
and fortunes of thousands of
their depositors eroded, incomes fell drastically and people
lost their jobs. The consequences of
the crisis also frustrated the government which had been in
office since 1999. The three coalition
partners could not survive any longer and called for early
elections in 2002, when all of them
were strictly punished by the entire electorate. The scope of
the social unrest was considerably
high, as street protests became a routine practice of the
quotidian social life, which at times
turned into tense encounters between demonstrators and the
police. Massive protests were held
by shopkeepers, public and private workers and civil servants
who had to bear the heaviest
burden of the economic hardships.
Around seven years later, the global markets, of which Turkey is
an ambitious player entered
into the greatest depression since 1929. Perhaps motivated by
self-confidence out of already six
years in rule as the head of a single party government, Prime
Minister Erdoğan said that ‚the
crisis will only be tangent to Turkey‛. To him, the Turkish
economy was stable and strong
enough to overcome the crisis with a minimum damage. The curious
question was, of course,
was that really the case for an economy which is highly
dependent on global capital? Although
the two crises were structurally different, certain economic
indicators show that the effects of
the 2008 depression on Turkey was far from being ‘tangent’, if
not equally destructive as in
2001. However, the level of social contention was significantly
lower in the latter episode. Was
mailto:[email protected]
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Erdoğan right, or is there something more to say about the
protest mobilization in these two
terms?
The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the
differences in contention during the
two crises periods in Turkey. For that I will look at the
protest events comparing the two crisis
terms. Here, I will argue that albeit rooted dissimilarly, a
comparison of the crisis outcomes will
not suffice to explain the different levels of mobilization in
the course of the economic downfall.
Instead, one shall look at (a) the configuration of the ruling
elites, and (b) the politicized issue of
corruption in 2000/2001 to better understand why social
contention acted out through street
protests was lower in scale, less diffuse, and less radical in
the second half of 2008 and first
couple of months of 2009.
This paper is structured as follows. First, I will give a
descriptive account of what has exactly
happened in Turkey in 2001 and 2008 as a result of the economic
crises. I do not aim at digging
into the details of the crisis narrative; rather I plan to give
a general idea about the extent to
which the Turkish society was affected by the two crises on a
macro level. Then, I will share the
results of the protest event analysis covering each one-year
periods in 2001 and 2008. Finally, I
will structure my argument along the axes of ‘divided elites’
and the salience of corruption
(political dissent).
The twin crises of 2000 and 2001
The Turkish economy throughout the 1990s was experiencing
typical difficulties instigated by
an uncontrolled financial liberalization. A series of IMF-led
programs turned to be
unsustainable leading to high inflation rates, devaluations,
large budgetary deficits, and
onwards. In 1999, the government signed a stand-by agreement
with the IMF with an ultimate
aim of stabilizing the economy. Yet, following a short term of a
successful implementation, in
November 2000, the banking system entered into a formidable
turbulence. The impasse of a
huge foreign exchange debt pushed the banks towards a liquidity
crisis. The $7.5 billion extra
credit provided by the IMF helped the Central Bank to
temporarily calm down the shock wave.
Just three months later, nevertheless, a political conflict
between the president and the prime
minister sparked the second major hit to the financial system
which already ran out of its power
to resist massive capital outflows. Within a single day on
February 21st, the infamous ‘Black
Wednesday’, the stock market fell down by almost 20 per cent,
and the Turkish Lira depreciated
about 30 per cent against the U.S. dollar (Uygur 2001; Akyüz and
Boratav 2003; Dufour and
Orhangazi 2009).
The immediate social reaction to the crisis came from the
established institutions of the civil
society. The day after the ‘Black Wednesday’, the civil
initiative conglomeration (Sivil İnisiyatif
Başkanlar Kurulu) of professional chambers, labor and employer
unions made a declaration to
the government claiming that they will not support any recovery
program which does not take
into account their opinion (İşveren, February 2001). The Labor
Platform (Emek Platformu) went
further by stating that if their demands for stopping mass
lay-offs of workers and other anti-
labor practices are not met, ‚the entire landscape of Turkey
will be turned into a field of
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demonstrations‛ (www.belgenet.com). A representative body of the
business sector, TOBB, The
Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey, made a call
in the national
newspapers with an analogy to the ‘Independence War’,
emphasizing national unity. The call
was also concerned about breaking out of a potential social
upheaval which would lead to
widespread public disorder (Milliyet 20.03.2001). Nonetheless,
the growing popular discontent
with the economic conditions has eventually led to mass protest
mobilizations throughout the
whole country. Starting from April 2001 onwards, not only in
major cities such as Istanbul,
Ankara, and Izmir, but also in many other Anatolian towns like
Konya, Gaziantep, Bursa, and
Eskişehir, which do not have regular records of large events,
hundreds of thousands of people
gathered to protest against losses of jobs, savings,
bankruptcies and so on. Particularly those
people called esnaf, which refers to a class of small
shopkeepers, artisans and traders, were very
active and mostly organized by TESK, the Turkish Confederation
of Artisans and Shopkeepers.
They were accompanied by a variety of emekçiler, composed of all
segments of public and
private workers and civil servants. The cycle of protest has
slowed down towards the end of the
month, yet it rejuvenated, albeit smaller in magnitude, by
contentious gatherings of the banking
personnel who lost their jobs due to the confiscation of certain
banks by TMSF, the Savings
Deposits Insurance Fund.
The traumatic experience of the Turkish society has turned into
a driving force for restructuring
the economy. The then deputy president of the World Bank, Kemal
Derviş, was literally called
for carrying out this difficult task which was headed ‘Strong
Economy Program’ under the
auspices of the IMF. The core aims of the program were 1)
eliminating the financial
vulnerability of the Turkish economy by reinforcing the banking
sector, 2) ascertaining the
transparency and accountability through supervisory
institutions, 3) achieving stability via
deflationary policies, and 4) facilitating economic growth
(Central Bank of the Republic of
Turkey – www.tcmb.gov.tr). These survival efforts
notwithstanding, the governing parties as
well as their contemporaries were highly discredited in the
public eye. Not surprisingly
therefore, one of the sharpest political outcomes of the crisis
was the punishment of almost all
mainstream political parties by the electorate that kept them
out of the parliament, let alone
losing their governing positions. It was more or less due to the
same reason why AKP, a very
recently established party composed of ex-Islamists, could make
an unchallenged victory in the
early elections of 2002.
The ‘tangent’ 2008
The 2001 crisis was rooted domestically, thus originally
different from the 2008 depression
which started in the U.S. mortgage markets and gradually
diffused to the globe. The banking
sector being restructured, and the commitment to the new economy
program having yielded
successive growth rates, the main question concerning Turkey was
about to what extent the
country was susceptible to the aggressive waves of the global
crisis. The Turkish political
authorities spoke very confidently about the fate of the
national economy, whose survival is
paradoxically dependent on the mobility of the global capital.
Indeed, since the aftermath of the
2001 crisis the Turkish economy has recorded an average of 5%
annual growth in line with the
neoliberal measures. Note that this performance was not due to
the explosion of the real sector
http://www.belgenet.com/http://www.tcmb.gov.tr/
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and the industrial production. It was made possible through mass
privatizations and volatile
capital transactions such as foreign direct investments and
portfolio investments (Yeldan 2009).
The recessive fluctuations in the global markets thus posed
serious risks for the Turkish
business sector which used to enjoy external demands and
borrowings.
Unlike 2001, Turkey did not pass through a ‘black’ weekday in
2008; however, the social
implications of the latter were by no means incomparable to the
previous crisis. The Turkish
Statistical Institute (TUIK) reports an erosion of the GDP per
capita by about $2000 which
amounts to the 20 per cent of its average sum by then. During
the same term, the
unemployment rate within the male population has risen by 57,
whereas among the females it
has increased by 45 per cent (Dinççağ and Dündar 2011). A survey
investigating household
welfare conducted by UNICEF, World Bank and TEPAV (Economic
Policy Research Foundation
of Turkey) also supports these indicators in sociological
respect. The results have shown that
around three quarter of the household declared a fall in their
income, which is particularly
higher among lower classes and those who work in the informal
sector (TEPAV, 29.09.2009). In
other words, the impact of the global depression seems to have
deeply penetrated into the
material perceptions of Turkish population. In order to have a
comparative perspective, the
Table 1 presents selected indicators of the two crises.
Table 1 – Selected indicators
2001 2008
GDP per capita fall at current prices (%) 26 20
Unemployment rate (%) 8.4 11
Young unemployment (%) 16.2 20.5
Closed/established traders (%) 81 80
Closed/established companies/cooperatives (%) 8 19
Reel net wage index public & private workers (mean) 96.7
93.1
Reel net wage index civil servants 104.8 136
Source: TUIK, State Planning Organization
Needless to say, the table is not a full-fledged inventory of
the crisis conditions in Turkey. Yet,
these indicators suffice to show that the outcomes of the 2008
depression do not seem much less
severe, if not equally detrimental to the societal affluence. In
certain respects such as the
unemployment or terminated businesses, the latter looks even
more serious as a potential
source of discontent. That is to say that once we assume that
the economic grievances had been
the main source for the widespread protest mobilization
following the 2001 crisis, we can also
anticipate comparably strong grievances in the latter period
which can potentially lead to
mobilized social unrest. Whether this assumption is problematic
or not, is a question that this
paper is trying to address.
As far as the mainstream media is concerned, the social unrest
impeded by the material
deterioration in the course of the 2008 crisis has not been
amongst the most popular public
debates in Turkey. At first glance, the level of protest
mobilization seemed neither as massive
nor spatially as diffuse as in the 2001 period. The role of the
media in manipulating social
reality could of course be a possible explanation for the
underrepresentation of a particular
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phenomenon. Considering the worsening situation of the press
freedom in the country, this
would indeed make sense. Without any systematical research,
however, such an argument
would only remain as a speculation. This is what I will try to
overcome in the next section.
Protest events
Arguably, the mobilization of social unrest is most visibly
observable during episodes of protest
events. That is why I decided to examine events which are in one
way or another related to the
consequences of the economic crises. For the analysis of the
protest events, I have relied on a
national newspaper called Cumhuriyet. The newspaper has
left-nationalistic leanings, but my
selection for collecting information on protests is motivated by
a practical rationale, rather than
by the source’s ideological qualities. Among other media
sources, it turned out to cover the
highest amount of protest-related news which enabled me to have
a larger pool to analyze.
Actually, using newspapers for such an analysis is not immune
from plausibly critical
interpretations (McCarthy, McPhail and Smith 1996, 2001; Oliver
and Maney 2000; Strawn 2008;
Davenport 2010). The selection and description biases that stem
from the very strategies and
political stances of the media source on the one hand, and the
nature of the events being not
always sufficiently ‘spectacular’ to be labeled as ‘newsworthy’,
on the other hand, cast
reasonable doubts on the reliability of newspaper information.
Still, once the researcher is
aware of the potential problems that such biases would cause, it
is safe to claim that
‚researchers can effectively use such data, and newspaper data
does (sic) not deviate markedly
from accepted standards of quality‛ (Earl et al. 2004, 77).
For each case, I have looked at one-year periods, i.e. from
November 2000 and from June 2008
onwards respectively. These more or less correspond to the time
intervals when the crises
started to be effectual until the domestic conditions began
showing signs of recovery. The
coverage includes every second day issues of the newspaper plus
the front pages of the days in
between.
Figure 1 – Protest cycle during crisis terms
Source: Cumhuriyet
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Figure 1 displays the distribution of the protests with no
geographical differentiation. These are
protests that are either directly mobilized against the economic
crisis, or raise relevant issues
such as unemployment, layoffs, salaries, increase in prices, and
also financial matters such as
the collapse of the banks. In the first period, the initial
phase of the crisis seems to have fostered
immediate contentious response which temporarily calmed down
until the second phase. Then,
the mobilization skyrockets abruptly in April which subsequently
flattens as the protest cycle
dies out. In the latter case, the magnitude of the cycle is
considerably less strong.
The spatial diffusion of the protest events also shows marked
differences between the two
episodes. Turkey is divided into 81 administrative provinces
that are located in 7 geographical
regions. During the 2000/2001 crisis, protests have taken place
in 20 provinces as they were
reported by Cumhuriyet. In fact, since the actual number of
protests is much higher than the
reported one, the amount of the provinces involved shall also be
higher. But as same holds true
for the latter term, one can justifiably ignore this lack of
actual correspondence. In 2008, on the
other hand, the newspaper has reported only 13 provinces, which
means that the spatial
diffusion has occurred to a firmly lesser extent.
One thing which merits close attention concerns the forms of
collective action and the responses
from the law enforcement authorities. A useful categorization
distinguishes peaceful and
demonstrative forms of protest from confrontational and violent
ones (Kriesi et al 1995). In
many events, in fact, these action forms can coexist depending
both on the profile of the
protesters involved, and on the police reaction which can turn a
peaceful demonstration into a
violent event. By confrontational forms, I refer to the protests
that push the limits of legal
permissiveness such as occupations and blockades, or
unauthorized gatherings, rallies and so
on. Violent events usually go more extreme and involve physical
attack on property or security
forces. In 2001, crisis-related protests at times became
radicalized in terms of the forms of
collective action. Cumhuriyet reports 10 such events all of
which has occurred during the cycle in
April. But by the same token, the police was also quite
repressive as they detained 464 people
under custody according to the newspaper coverage. In this
regard, the 2008 events proved to
be much less radical, which as an exogenous factor has
translated into softer tactics of protest
policing.
Table 2 – Diffusion and radicalization
2000-2001 2008
Geographical diffusion (number of provinces) 20 13
Confrontational/violent events 10 2
Detainees/custody 464 0
Source: Cumhuriyet
These results are remarkable when we also consider the
participants of the protest. Obviously,
organizational affiliation and preparation is an advantage for
the masses to mobilize on the
streets. That is why it is not surprising to see labor unions
and confederations as the most active
organizations partaking in crisis protests. Part of the reason
also owes to the fact that public and
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private workers, civil servants and other fixed salary groups
are economically amongst the most
vulnerable social classes during times of crisis. Currently,
there are three worker and two public
laborer confederations in Turkey. Among them, DİSK
(Revolutionary Labor Unions
Confederation), KESK (Public Workers Unions Confederation) and
individual unions of TÜRK-
İŞ (Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions) have been most
actively involved in crisis protests.
For the purposes of this paper, two things are worth mentioning.
First, in 2001, Emek Platformu
(Labor Platform) was one of the leading organizers of mass
demonstrations during December
and April waves in particular. This is a temporarily established
platform composed of labor
confederations, professional chambers, and associations et
cetera in order to show collective
reaction not only to the crisis conditions but also to certain
economic and social policies. Second
and as I mentioned before, the esnaf groups who were at times
mobilized by their umbrella
organization TESK, were also in the foreground of 2001 protests.
Both of them were almost
absent throughout the 2008 term. Especially recalling the
proportion of terminated businesses to
the established ones which was more or less equally high in 2008
as the records of 2001, the
quiescence of the esnaf is a genuinely curious matter.
The most central question for me at the moment is, then, if the
economic grievances brought
about by the 2001 twin-crisis were the main catalyst for the
massive protest mobilization back
then, why was level of mobilization in 2008 incomparably less
massive, less diffuse and less
radical although the consequences of the 2008 crisis were
comparably hazardous? I argue that the
answer lies within (a) the configuration of the ruling elites,
and (b) the politicized issue of
corruption, both of which facilitated mobilization in 2001,
while they worked out differently in
2008, and can be counted for the weaker protest behavior back
then.
Divided ruling elites, widespread corruption: social unrest
heightened
a. Divided elites
The concept of ‘divided elites’ has been coined as one dimension
of the political opportunities
which is seen as a potential catalyst of mobilization. The logic
follows that the ‚divisions among
elites not only provides incentives to resource-poor groups to
take the risk of collective action;
they encourage portions of the elite that are out of power to
seize the role of ‘tribunes of the
people’‛ (Tarrow 1998, 79). Previous research has shown
different ways of looking at the
phenomenon of divided elites with regard to its influence on
contentious politics. For instance,
in their study on the women’s protests and congressional
activities in the U.S., Sarah A. Soule
and her colleagues have conceptualized the division between
supportive elites in the legislature
and the oppositional presidency in terms of their responsiveness
to women’s claims as a form of
elite division, and found that it worked as a spurring factor
for the women’s collective action
(Soule et al. 1999). A more recent work on political parties and
social protest in 17 countries in
Latin America has employed an event-count model on legislative
fragmentation and party
system institutionalization (Arce 2010). The author has shown
that in countries with weaker
and more fragmented parties in the legislation, i.e. more
divided elites, channeling economic
discontent through street protests is more common than those
with less fragmented
parliaments. Elite division, in short, undermines the unity of
the ruling power block which
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would otherwise have stood against dissenters’ claims, and thus
creates an ample opportunity
for them to find influential allies.
I argue that the political process leading to the 2000/2001
crisis in Turkey was taking place
under conditions of elite division, which, once coupled with
disclosed stories of notorious
corruption, escalated social unrest to a much higher extent.
This was of course, not an overnight
story, but an ongoing narrative starting from early 1990s
onwards, a decade characterized by
political and economic instability. Within a ten-year period,
Turkish politics witnessed ten times
of a governmental change (Grand National Assembly, TBMM). These
governments were
composed of parties whose electoral turnouts were swinging at
the margins of 20 per cent;
which at times were less than a majority in the parliament, and
occasionally (February 28th,
1997) interrupted by military intervention. Under these
circumstances, it was common to
observe economic programs suspended, indicators fluctuating, all
of which to the detriment of
the social sectors. One clear example was the then Prime
Minister Çiller’s withdrawal from IMF
program after four months since its inauguration, and her call
for early elections in 1994.
Prior to the general elections in 1999, the tripartite coalition
of Motherland Party (ANAP),
Democratic Left Party (DSP) and Democratic Turkey Party (DTP)
have formed a government
with the aim of ‚saving the country from the regime and state
crises caused by the previous
government‛ (Grand National Assembly, TBMM). They were preceded
by the Erbakan-led
government which had to resign following the soft coup against
the ‚imminent Islamic threat‛
within the state apparatuses. Nevertheless, the coalition could
only survive a bit more than
eighteen months because of a corruption scandal concerning the
tender of a national bank
allegedly involved by two leading figures of ANAP, Mesut Yılmaz
and Güneş Taner. The
negative vote of confidence for the government has culminated in
the formation of an interim
government to lead the country until the elections in 1999.
Another tripartite coalition by DSP,
ANAP and Nationalist Action Party (MHP) was formed and remained
in office until 2002,
strongly discredited by the economic crisis and paralyzed by the
inter-party conflicts especially
between the latter two.
This short overview, I think, is useful to have an idea about
the political climate dominant
throughout that decade. Back then, the DSP-ANAP-MHP coalition
had a difficult task to fix the
chronic problems of the Turkish economy troubled by huge public
debts and growing current
account deficits in the first place. DSP was one of the
post-1980-coup parties with leftist
orientations rooted in the late 1960s and 1970s, which more and
more leaned toward
nationalistic overtones. MHP has been an extreme nationalist
player strategically capitalizing on
anti-(‘Kurdish’-) divisiveness propaganda. ANAP on the other
hand, has been an ambitious
supporter of a free-market economy and liberalization.
Obviously, it was not a coalition based
on shared political stances. When it came to issues of political
reformation in line with
European Union prospects, for instance, disagreements were
common which sometimes have
led to deadlocks in passing laws in the parliament.
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It was in such an atmosphere when the ruling elites were trying
to carry out a program
stipulated by an agreement with the IMF in summer 1999. The then
Undersecretary of Treasury,
Selçuk Demiralp, described the situation as follows:
It is very difficult, almost impossible to implement such
programs by coalition governments.
Problems arose out of it. When necessary, immediate measures
could not be taken. Long
discussions took place *
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At the end of the decade, on the contrary, the picture looked
quite differently in this respect. In
terms of the government composition, the AKP was enjoying its
second term as a single-party
government, having increased its votes by around 30 per cent
almost to the half size of the
entire electorate in July 2007. Soon after the elections,
President Sezer was replaced by Abdullah
Gül, a founding member of the AKP. This not only enabled AKP to
make politics (and
manipulate issues such as economic crisis) without being
disrupted by internal challenges, but
also gave the opportunity to seek almost an absolute control
over significant bureaucratic units
of the state. It does not necessarily mean that the ruling
elites were transformed into a
monolithic body, but provides a sharp contrast to the fragmented
and at times conflicting
relations among the elites in the previous term.
b. Corruption (political dissent)
The second thing that, in my opinion, has broadened the scale of
social unrest at the turn of the
century was widespread corruption involving business and
political entrepreneurs. In general,
the negative effect of corruption on political support of the
incumbents is a substantiated
argument (Anderson and Tverdova 2003). What is more relevant for
this paper is its relation to
protest mobilization. Certain findings from earlier studies
displayed that high rates of
corruption intertwined with severe economic hardships is a
potent factor cementing social
protest. One research on the 1991 spring wave of protests in
several Sub-Saharan African
countries has rejected economic accounts for the intensifying
social unrest because;
the issue of elite corruption1 served as a vehicle for
transforming narrow economic grievances into
broad political demands. Protests began to draw a connection
between economic failures and the
lack of political accountability in single-part states. Rather
than condemning the decline in
commodity prices or western protectionism, they blamed patronage
and nepotism for the
economic crisis. (Bratton and van de Walle 1992, 430)
Just as economic grievances can grow with political outcry
against corruption, the latter
deepens further with a solidified sense of material losses.
Chen’s work on the labor
demonstrations in China in the mid of the 1990s pointed out that
corruption among managers
of state owned enterprises could not by itself render workers to
rise up ‚if their lives are not
terribly affected by it‛. Protests began as workers were
‚simultaneously confronted with
subsistence crisis and witnessing cadre corruption in their
enterprises‛ (Chen 2000, 51).
In Turkey, corruption seems to have a played a similar role in
bringing together economic
grievances with political contention during the 2001 crisis
term. Actually, the Corruption
Perception Index (CPI) prepared by Transparency International
(TI) shows that Turkey
improved only slightly from 3.6 in 2001 to 4.6 in 2008 in the
ten-point scale, while its ranking
fell down from 56th to 58th among other countries (Transparency
International Annual Report
2001, 2008). But arguably, the sort of corruption disclosed
towards the end of the 1990s and the
beginning of the 2000s was more tangible by the population due
to the amount of losses and the
1 Italics by the author.
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eruption of scandals. Several civil society organizations
prepared reports to inform the public
about the scale of corruption whose damage on the domestic
economy is enormously high. On
the top of the corruption scandals was the banking sector, if
not confined to it.
Banking, utilities, and public tenders are the most important
areas of corruption. More than
US$42 billion was siphoned off by state and official banks.
(Global Integrity Country Report 2004,
5)
Only between the years 1999 and 2001, the Savings Deposits
Insurance Fund has confiscated 19
banks, some of them brought together and sold, others sold
directly, or conveyed to other banks
(TMSF). A research conducted by TOBB reveals that the losses of
the yet-thirteen banks
transferred to TMSF amounts to $12.5 billion (Savurganlık
Ekonomisi Araştırması, TOBB 2001).
The social costs of these bankruptcies were to be borne by, on
the one hand, thousands of
banking personnel who became jobless, and on the other, those
who had deposits in these
banks and lost their savings accumulated in several years. This
was nevertheless, only part of
the whole story. Besides the losses in the banking sector;
corruption, waste and other forms of
mismanagement of public resources throughout the 1990s are
estimated to have a $195 billion
cost to the Turkish economy (TOBB 2001, 20-21). Indeed, a
corruption report prepared by
KAMUSEN (Public Laborers Unions Confederation of Turkey)
indicates 18 criminal operations
against corruption only in 2000 and 2001 (Türkiye KAMU-SEN, date
unknown). As the stories
of corruption scandals became disclosed one after another, they
probably have contributed to
the growing social dissent related to worsening economic
conditions. Results from certain
public surveys adduce to the salience of the corruption issue
attributed by the Turkish
population. At the beginning of the 2000s, it was perceived as
one of the three most important
social problems to be solved in Turkey. However, in 2008, the
salience of the issue lost weight in
the public eye (Adaman, Çarkoğlu, and Şenatalar 2001; 2009).
This is certainly not to suggest that at the end of the 2000s,
corruption was insignificant as a
matter in Turkish politics. The TI report proves that this was
by no means the case. However, at
the beginning of the decade the corruption of political and
business circles was organically
intermingled with the economic crisis, so much so that the
public outcry turned into a snowball
against the ruling elites in addition to the material
conditions. It is, in contrast, hard to say that
the same held true in the latter term. Perhaps, a comparison of
the level of trust and satisfaction
with domestic politics in the two periods could be a better
indicator of how social unrest was
intermingled with political discontent in 2001, whereas the
latter was not as large-scale in 2008.
Figure 2 summarizes the descriptive statistics from the two
waves of the European Values
Study (EVS). Obviously, the dissatisfaction with the government
performance was much higher
in 1999/2000 period, whereas satisfaction increases considerably
in 2008. By the same token, half
of the survey participants displayed complete distrust in the
parliament during the first wave,
while the results are more evenly distributed during the second
wave.
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Figure 2 – View of the government and trust in parliament
Source: European Values Study
Discussion and concluding remarks
In this paper, I have compared and contrasted the protest
activities in Turkey during the
domestic economic crisis in 2000/2001 and the 2008 global
depression. Albeit rooted differently,
the material consequences of the two crises did not differ from
each other significantly,
considering certain indicators that one may expect to influence
everyday perceptions of
individuals about economic wellbeing. The protest mobilization
in the latter period, however,
turned out to be strikingly less massive, less diffuse and less
radical. My explanation of this
question has relied on political processes. I have argued that
first, the fragmented and divided
configuration of the ruling elites, and second, the scandalous
corruption cases which directly
impinged on the affluence of the masses have fused with the
economic grievances and
contributed to the growing of the social unrest with political
dissent at the beginning of the
decade. In the latter period, not only were the ruling elites
much less fragmented and divided,
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13
but the political discontent with the routine governance, of
which corruption is possibly a part,
also did not seem as high as to be integrated to the economic
grievance caused by the
depression. Hence, I have claimed, the level of participation
and the engagement of various
social groups, the spatial diffusion and the radicalization of
the protest mobilization in
2000/2001 occurred to a much higher extent compared to the
contentious activity in 2008/2009.
The picture that I have drawn in this paper does only focus on
general political dynamics and
misses certain points regarding organizational and individual
questions. In other words, I offer
only a partial answer to the puzzle that I have posed to
address. What could complement this
picture would be a meso-level analysis of the organizations,
i.e. labor unions, confederations in
the first place, but also other actors in the civil society who
were active in the first period but
not that much during the second. Individual motivations for
mobilization and non-mobilization
are no less important as a question, which can be addressed by
means of in-depth interviews.
By doing so, I would say, the analysis will wrap in bone and
flesh.
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