The Shape of ‘Rising Powers’ to Come? The Antinomies of Growth and Neoliberal Development in Turkey

ABSTRACT

The short-term GDP growth-based economic success of the BRICS has spawned a trend of grouping large emerging market economies under shared monikers. The proliferation of a wide array of labels – from MINTs to VISTAs – within political and financial circles has been accompanied by a growing scholarly interest in the study of these ‘emerging markets’ and future ‘rising powers’. This paper discusses the literature on Turkey’s ‘rising power’ status to problematise the conceptual and analytical parameters that shape these wider debates. Accordingly, I argue that the established parameters are wholly based in, and in turn reproduce, a neoliberal conception of development which prioritises a narrowly construed metric of economic progress based on GDP growth, while simultaneously ignoring the associated socio-economic and environmental costs. The paper interrogates the ways in which select macroeconomic indicators have been deployed to legitimise neoliberal reform in Turkey and utilises this case study to mount a methodological challenge to the relevant IR/IPE literatures that conceptualise ‘emerging markets’ and ‘rising powers’ from growth-oriented perspectives.

KEYWORDS:

• BRICS
• macroeconomic indicators
• neoliberalism
• rising powers
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Political Studies Association Annual Conference (2016) in Brighton, UK. I would like to thank Matthew L. Bishop, Peg Murray-Evans, Ian Bruff, Ilias Alami, Liam Stanley and Ezgi Ünsal for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. Thanks are also due to the three anonymous reviewers for their feedback. Usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Cemal Burak Tansel is Lecturer in International Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the historical sociology of state formation and capitalist development in the Middle East and the political economy of development. He is the editor of States of Discipline: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Contested Reproduction of Capitalist Order (2017) and has published research articles in the European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, South European Society and Politics and Globalizations.

Notes

1 N−11 includes Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey, South Korea and Vietnam.

2 These snapshots represent a fragment of the burgeoning literature on Turkey’s ‘rising power’ status. In addition to the publications discussed throughout the article, readers can refer to the following texts for other interventions that operate within the parameters of the ‘rising powers’ debate: Cornell et al. (2012), Bank and Karadag (2013), Tanrısever (2015), Şatana (2016), Boyle (2016), Pehlivantürk (2017).

3 It is beyond the scope of the paper to delve into a substantial discussion of the limitations and pitfalls of the GDP measurements, particularly as an indicator of social welfare and economic progress. For examinations of and alternatives to GDP, see, inter alia, Seers (1972), Mishan (1975 [1967]), Sen (1991), Vellinga and Withagen (1996), Stockhammer et al. (1997), Gough et al. (2007), Stiglitz et al. (2009), Fioramonti (2013), Coyle (2014), Mügge (2016).

4 Without assuming a linear trajectory of progress, I use the term ‘development’ here to refer, broadly, to the processes of socio-economic change, and ‘neoliberal development’ as a shorthand for capturing those processes that prioritise capital accumulation. As such, the term ‘neoliberal development’ should not be read exclusively as a reference to its incarnation in development studies, which is often used to describe a constellation of (neoliberal) policy prescriptions advocated by international organisations and financial institutions to be implemented in the global South. For the latter, see Kyung-Sup et al. (2012), Escobar (2012 [1995]), Weber (2015), Bishop (2016, p. 13–17).

5 On China, see Lim (2017); on Russia, see Rutland (2013).

6 See Berlinski (2017) for a retrospective.

7 For glimpses into the once-thriving debate on the limits and prospects of promoting a ‘Turkish model’, see Çagaptay (2014), Taşpınar (2014), Tuğal (2016).

8 Şaban Kardaş (2013) provides the only contribution that attempts to construct a framework of analysis, but his own conceptualisation is firmly wedded to the concept of ‘regional’ – not ‘rising’ – power, which leads him to circumnavigate some of the key aspects of the ‘rising powers’ debate that the editors and other authors focus on, while reinscribing the centrality of ‘hard power’ capabilities in determining what constitutes a ‘regional power’.

9 For representative examples, see Oğuzlu and Parlar Dal (2013, p. 618), Çagaptay (2013, p. 808).

10 The extent to which the concept of ‘rising powers’ – or at least its incarnation as a category with which to assess Turkey’s post-2002 trajectory – remains undertheorised can be detected in the prognoses offered by the contributors. Despite the efforts to place Turkey next to China and Russia as a ‘rising power’, at least in two pieces the authors put forward ‘[t]he deepening of Turkish democracy through a series of reform’ (Oğuzlu and Parlar Dal 2013, p. 634) and ‘sustaining and deepening the principles of liberal democracy’ (Çagaptay 2013, p. 807) as preconditions for Turkey’s aim to ‘become a complete rising power’ (Oğuzlu and Parlar Dal 2013, p. 634). The obvious question that remains unanswered is whether the existing ‘complete’ rising powers like China and Russia have successfully ‘deepened’ their democracies or adopted the principles of liberal democracy.

11 See Öniş and Güven (2011), Öniş and Kutlay (2013) for two exceptions.

12 Unless otherwise noted, all data are retrieved from the World Bank World Development Indicators. Available from: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator [Accessed 10 July 2018]. Turkish Statistical Institute recently revised the country’s GDP series in line with the System of National Accounts (SNA-2008) and the European System of Accounts (ESA-2010), which resulted in a significant increase in the estimated real GDP growth rate from 2009 onwards. While the new series seem to have captured the role of construction sector investments more accurately (Bakış 2016), as Erik Meyersson (2016) has demonstrated, statistical revisions have created an ‘unprecedented upward revision in Turkey’s economic performance’, ‘not only from an absolute perspective, but especially so in comparison with other cases of ESA (European standards) or SNA (United Nations standards) revisions’. Seen together with AKP governments’ tendency to ‘revise’ macroeconomic figures and the widespread criticisms of the ways in which official statistics are collected and interpreted, there are good reasons to approach the new growth rates with a healthy scepticism. For this reason, instead of the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook figures which are based on these revisions, I opted to use the previous set of figures available from the World Bank database. For other critical assessments of the new growth figures, see Boratav (2017), Sönmez (2017).

13 I selected the FTSE classification here as it brings together the BRICS with many of the high performers in other ‘emerging market’ groupings like N−11 and MINT. ‘FTSE Annual Country Classification Review’, FTSE Russell, 1 September 2016. Available from: http://www.ftse.com/products/downloads/FTSE-Country-Classification-Update_latest.pdf [Accessed 10 July 2018].

14 See, for example, Öniş and Kutlay (2013, p. 1412) even though the authors note that they measure growth in nominal terms.

15 As Dani Rodrik (2015) put it, ‘[t]he comparative experience suggests that Turkey (and other similar countries) benefited from an unusually favorable external environment. In particular, financial globalization and the availability of cheap foreign capital seems to have played a critical role’ in these countries’ recent economic performance.

16 Data retrieved from the Prime Ministry Privatisation Administration’s 2016 annual report, cited in the text as ÖİB (2017). Online copy available from: http://www.oib.gov.tr/dokuman/faaliyet-raporlari/2016-yili-faaliyet-raporu.pdf [Accessed 10 July 2018].

17 Data retrieved from the World Bank Privatisation Database. Available from: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/privatization-database [Accessed 10 July 2018].

18 Data retrieved from the World Bank World Development Indicators. Unemployment rates are modelled ILO estimates.

19 Data retrieved from the World Bank World Development Indicators.

20 Data retrieved from the World Inequality Database. Available from: https://wid.world/country/turkey [Accessed 10 July 2018]. See also Alvaredo et al. (2018).