Turkey
Turkey suffered severe economic and political crisis in November 2000 and February 2001 caused by adherence to an IMF prescribed exchange rate regimen. Over the course of 2001, GDP contracted by 7.4% in real terms, price inflation soared to 61.6% and the currency lost 51% of its value against major foreign currencies. The IMF has been heavily involved in managing the Turkish economy both before and after the crisis. The Turkish government has followed an orthodox IMF program of reducing subsidies to agriculture, privatizing and reducing the public sector's role in economic activities. Working people have borne the brunt of the crisis and subsequent adjustments as unemployment rose from 6.4% in 1997 to 11.9% in the first quarter of 2006. Since 2001 and through the first quarter of 2006, labor productivity has risen sharply while real wages have gone down. Labor's position has deteriorated further as government policy has been aimed at creating "investor confidence" democratic institutions have been put under siege through an endless list of conditionalities set forth by the IMF and the World Bank and transnational companies and the international financial institutions (IFIs) have become the real governors with an implicit veto power over any economic and/or political decision that is likely to go against the interests of global capital.
- To read a detailed labor market
analysis for Turkey, download one of the following:
Adobe Acrobat [.pdf] [size 364 kb]
Microsoft Word [.doc] [size 336 kb]
Submitted by:
Erinc Yeldan,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
eyeldan@peri.umass.edu
and
Bilkent University, Ankara
yeldane@bilkent.edu.tr
http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~yeldane
Independent Social Scientists Alliance
http://www.bagimsizsosyalbilimciler.org/
Update posted November 27, 2006.
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