The Authoritarian State Form, Reconfiguration of Power Bloc, and the Growth Model in Turkey in the 21st century

Abstract

This article analyzes the continuities and changes in state form, forms of regime, power bloc, and growth model of Turkey in the 21st century, using the analytical tools provided by critical state theory and research on financialization and growth models. I argue that there has been a reconfiguration of the power bloc in the 2010s, which symbolized the search for an alternative compared to the debt-led and domestic-demand-oriented growth pattern of the 2000s. However, these macroeconomic measures were unsystematic until the Covid-19 pandemic, and the state’s mechanisms to incorporate large social groups and tools to support capital accumulation mainly remained the same in the 2010s. Despite the reconfiguration of the power bloc and the search for a new growth model in the mid-to-late 2010s, I stress the continuation of the authoritarian state form in Turkey until the Covid-19 pandemic and conceive the transition to a new regime in the 2010s as a change in the form of regime.

Keywords

• State Form
• Power Bloc
• Authoritarianism in Turkey
• Financialization
• Growth