Shaky emerging economies in view of the global financial crisis: the Turkish economy after three decades of liberal reforms

In the wake of the global change of a new accumulation regime in main capitalist economies, the opening up and liberalisation process of emerging economies from the 1980s has provoked great expectations that resulted in recurrent disappointing crises. Studied as a stylized fact, the Turkish experience leads us to evaluate the role of liberalised macroeconomic environment, unsuitable economic policies and hesitant and weak regulatory mechanisms as the main sources of perverse sequencing in the reform area. The paper shows that the Turkish crises since the 1980s arose from bad macroeconomic policies which implemented the neo-liberal shock therapy model and triggered boom-and-bust cycles. After three decades of liberal reforms, the Turkish economy remains still subject to structural downturns as the economic recovery is not guaranteed by a hasty liberalisation but by consistent policies which should frame economic actors‟ behaviour in the aim of a sustainable macroeconomic development.