New regionalism in Turkey: questioning the ‘new’ and the ‘regional’

ABSTRACT

Turkey’s regional policies are inspired by the new regionalism theory. During past two decades, key concepts of new regionalism, including knowledge economies, specialization, networked cities and innovation, have been incorporated in policy documents. At the same time, Turkey comes from a strong central state tradition that controls local and regional development. At first insight, new regionalism and strong central state control do not fit in the same frame. This research analyses the trajectory of regional policies in Turkey with the aim of explaining how these seemingly incompatible policies can coexist. It argues that regional policies developed at the central state level utilized new regionalism as a part of the strategy to maintain power in the course of transformation of the nation state.

KEYWORDS:

• Regional policies
• new regionalism
• transformation of the nation state
• Turkey

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to two anonymous referees. Their critical and constructive comments helped to improve the manuscript. Also thanks to the whole editing and publishing team, who have spent time on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Ervin Sezgin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0924-3346

Notes

1. This number can even be extended by including the so-called ‘postmodern’ military coup of 28 February 1997, which was basically an online statement by the military that caused the resignation of the civil government, and the failed coup attempt of 15 June 2016.

2. Kurdish political movements in Turkey are too complicated to be labelled simply ‘separatist’. They existed since the beginning of the republican history and only a limited part of them opted for armed rebellion and separatism. Many other groups concentrated their efforts for more democracy and autonomy within the unitary state. The paper uses the phrase ‘Kurdish separatism’, with this reservation, since it was, and still is a part of the official rhetoric.