Turkish Economy at the Crossroads: Facing the Challenges Ahead is an exciting new volume of articles from prominent experts, edited by two distinguished economists. Despite its international stature and its diversified open-market economy, the global literature on Turkey is dispersed and sparse. The book aims to remedy this shortcoming by providing readers interested in Turkey with a balanced and up-to-date overview of the economy.Topics discussed include trends in long-term political economy, post-2001 macroeconomic policies, tradable and non-tradable sectors and their impact on income distribution, capital flows and financial imbalances, success and problems of structural transformation at the micro level, characteristics of the labor markets with special emphasis on female employment, Turkey's long lasting but difficult relations with the European Union and possible scenarios for the near future. This unified approach permits to highlight and tackle effectively the challenges and risks Turkey faces in the final and critical stage of transition to a modern developed society.

Adopting a political-economy perspective, this book is an original collection of research chapters that focus on Turkey’s economic-development experience from the nineteenth century to the present. It provides a systematic and chronological examination of Turkey’s major historical dynamics in the economic and socio-political spheres. The chapters are organized according to the consecutive phases of Turkey’s political-economic development. Each chapter not only reflects on the country-specific aspects of those development phases, but also clarifies the dependence of domestic-policy orientations on the dynamics of the world economy. As such, the book provides a historically-conscious, political-economic account of Turkey’s dependent-development experience. The book serves as a quality reference on the political economy of modern Turkey, bringing together fourteen prominent experts as contributing authors who have devoted their intellectual lives to the understanding and explanation of political-economic dynamics in both Turkey and the world. All contributors write on a historical period of the Turkish economy in which they are most specialized. This aspect of the book is a momentous advantage in the field of Turkey's political economy, enabling the highest degree of academic expertise to concentrate in each chapter.

Leading writer Boris Kagarlitsky offers an ambitious account of 1000 years of Russian history.

The first comprehensive history of the Turkish economy The population and economy of the area within the present-day borders of Turkey has consistently been among the largest in the developing world, yet there has been no authoritative economic history of Turkey until now. In Uneven Centuries, Şevket Pamuk examines the economic growth and human development of Turkey over the past two hundred years. Taking a comparative global perspective, Pamuk investigates Turkey’s economic history through four periods: the open economy during the nineteenth-century Ottoman era, the transition from empire to nation-state that spanned the two world wars and the Great Depression, the continued protectionism and import-substituting industrialization after World War II, and the neoliberal policies and the opening of the economy after 1980. Making use of indices of GDP per capita, trade, wages, health, and education, Pamuk argues that Turkey’s long-term economic trends cannot be explained only by immediate causes such as economic policies, rates of investment, productivity growth, and structural change. Uneven Centuries offers a deeper analysis of the essential forces underlying Turkey’s development—its institutions and their evolution—to make better sense of the country’s unique history and to provide important insights into the patterns of growth in developing countries during the past two centuries.

The topics include areas related to macroeconomics and monetary economics (inflation expectations, determinants of monetary policy), labor economics (earning differences, overeducation in labor markets), health economics (adult obesity), tourism economics (tourism response to disruptive events) and energy economics (solar energy systems).

This paper reviews economic developments in Turkey during 1992–95. Economic activity expanded sharply in 1993, sustained by buoyant domestic demand that was underpinned by expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, but accompanied by a large deterioration in the current account position. The unsustainability of this policy stance resulted in an exchange and financial market crisis in the first months of 1994. In April 1994, the authorities announced a comprehensive stabilization program that included substantial fiscal retrenchment, monetary tightening, and a structural reform agenda intended to strengthen the adjustment effort over the medium term.

Since the 1950s, the Turkish economy has periodically been facing crises. Decisions taken after crisis do not only have economic effects, but also social, political and diplomatic consequences. For the country, total independence was considered the main principle; economic independence was one of the substantial criteria of that principle, and economic policies were based on it. In this book, the economic independency level at which governments can take independent decisions is defined in terms of macroeconomic variables, on which the proposed model is based and developed. The book aims to analyse the economic policies of Turkey, from an economic dependency perspective; identify the macroeconomic variables affecting economic dependency; and develop an alternative economic policy, taking all of these points into consideration. Therefore, in order to structure the proposed model and to define policies, it is crucial to discuss economic policies, particularly in the post-1980 world; their consequences and impacts on Turkey; crises and the main variables under which they occurred; and to compare the economic policies of the Republic period and their consequences as well. The book intends to develop an independent economic structure so that Turkey can act in her own interests.

Turkey stands at a crossroad after a decade of adjustment to its severe debt crisis in the late 1970s. This volume brings together a group of contributors who discuss the consequences of this transition and the likely pains for the future.

How can Turkey increase its medium- and long-term growth potential? Despite episodes of fast growth, this has become a vital question for the Turkish economy, in order to avoid being stuck in a middle-income trap. There has been an increase in the number of studies presenting growth in Turkey and quantifying the sources of economic growth, however, due to the difference in the main underlying assumptions and the time period covered in these studies, the results differ. The second strand of literature on growth in Turkey identifies the relative underperformance of the Turkish economy by developing models with microeconomic foundations. Given the fact that there are a large number of studies investigating the macro dynamics of growth in Turkey, the book’s unique focus on the "neglected" issues in growth discussions closes the gap in the existing literature. It addresses the micro, macro, regional, and gender aspects, the environment–energy–growth nexus, as well as the microeconomic dynamics of growth. It also analyses the other significant determinants of long run growth in Turkey such as import dependency and saving-investment decision. The authors provide a macro overview of all of the precluded subjects in order to evaluate them in relation to one other, as well as to derive policy conclusions from them. This book primarily targets academics as well as graduate and undergraduate social sciences and humanities students both in Turkey and other countries. It is also a must read for researchers and policy makers not only in Turkey but also in other developing economies and is of interest to specialists of non-governmental and non-profit organizations.

This book shows the remarkable diversification in Turkey’s international political economy landscape in the 2000s: its domestic political-economy framework, instrumental alternatives and geographic outreach. It assesses both how an emerging economy like Turkey copes with domestic and external challenges and the question of how substantial Turkey’s recent rise in global politics really is. The volume also explains Turkey’s economic growth and political transformation in line with the changes occurring in world economics, from the Washington Consensus era to the current “mix” or “hybrid” era encompassing both the characteristics of the Post-Washington and Beijing Consensus eras. The contributors portray the complexity of Turkish politics and its fragilities at the political economy level.