[PEN-L:34159] Re: Re: Turkey, again.......

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

In conclusion, it is observed that the 2000/2001 crisis administration 
in Turkey primarily works as a debt-management program. In this sense, 
it is understood that the main purpose of the IMF-led salvation packages 
that are hailed as big successes in the international media is actually 
an operation of foreign debt roll-over, aiming at gaining the confidence 
of the international arbiters and financial speculators.

We observe that what lies behind the colourful jargon of “effective and 
transparent government”, “good governance”, and “credibility” is a set 
of structural transformations to ultimately satisfy the needs and 
demands of the foreign capital centers, rather than the strategic 
requirements of the domestic economy. In essence, this model depends on 
the contractionary monetary and finance policies, and assumes an open 
(i.e. dependent on foreign capital) economic structure ensuring the 
liberalization of the international capital flows. In this model what is 
really meant by the concept of “stabilization” is to establish an 
exchange rate system purified from devaluation risk, and to maintain a 
high real return in the national financial markets to attract the inflow 
of foreign capital.

Under this structure, the central banks are set to be “autonomous” and 
all their instruments of intervention are restricted, so that hey could 
not undertake any role apart from “maintaining price stabilization”. 
Fiscal policies, on the other hand, are to be directly focused on the 
objective of “budget with a primary surplus”. As result of these 
policies, boundaries of the public space are severely restricted, and 
all traditional economic and social infrastructural facilities of the 
public sector are being left to the strategic interest area of foreign 
capital at the cost of extraordinary cuts in public spending and 
investments.

The neo-liberal thought dictates that in order to take advantage of the 
benefits of “globalization”, national central banks with autonomous 
monetary, interest and exchange rate policies should not be a hindrance 
to international capital flows. The real objective of this philosophy is 
to make the central banks to be in charge of maintenance of price 
stability and to sustain the level of high real returns in the national 
financial markets. In so doing, rents allocated to the rent owners would 
be secured. Public finance, on the other hand, is limited to take all 
measures directly to enlarge the interest area of international capital. 
Departing from all these observations, it is clearly seen that the 
IMF-led adjustment program that is implemented in Turkey with a media 
propaganda that portrays it as “having no alternatives”, is actually 
part of a larger project defining Turkey’s role in the new international 
division of labor as a peripheral economy wherein industrialization and 
development targets are abandoned; domestic commodity and asset markets 
are integrated with the global markets under marginalized conditions; 
and where the domestic economy has been left unprotected and open to 
external shocks. Turkey is increasingly surrendered to the ordinances of 
global capital…

full: http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~yeldane/Chennai_Yeldan2002.pdf

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