The state of Turkey’s construction sector during the AKP era

Abstract

In this research, I focus on the noteworthy performance of Turkey’s construction sector during the Justice and Development Party (AKP) era and examine why the construction sector per se has been promoted by the AKP government since 2002. In this study, I argue that construction sector has become crucial to the perpetuation of AKP rule because this sector helps AKP to build and keep its winning coalition constituted by AKP cronies. For this reason, AKP has continuously privileged the sector. To formulate my hypotheses about the role of construction sector under AKP rule, I benefit from crony capitalism framework and supply-side economics theory. While the former explains the importance of construction sector to AKP rule, the latter depicts how construction-driven cronyism is made persistent. To test my hypotheses, I employ a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. For the first hypothesis, I use process tracing method, and for the second hypothesis, I employ multivariate regression model. Results of these analyses show that during the AKP era, construction sector has been privileged to build a winning coalition of AKP-cronies, and supply-side measures have been crucial to the persistence of construction-driven cronyism. This work has implications for state-business relations and single party authoritarianism in Turkey.