Content area
Full Text
TURKEY Politics of Favoritism in Public Procurement in Turkey: Reconfigurations of Dependency Networks in the AKP Era, by Esra Çeviker Gürakar. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 127 pages. $39.99.
Reviewed by Sabri Sayarı
This book seeks to provide new insights into the political economy of patronage distribution and favoritism in Turkey under the pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP, from the Turkish Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi), which has enjoyed uninterrupted tenure in government since November 2002. The main focus of Esra Çeviker Gürakar's concise monograph is the public procurement process, or the purchase of goods and services - such as roads, schools, social housing, electricity supply, and garbage collection - by the central and local governments from the private sector. According to the author, government spending through public procurement accounts for one-fourth of Turkey's annual budget and 8.5% of its gross domestic product. Governing parties in Turkey have traditionally sought to use the public tenders for partisan gain by awarding lucrative contracts to their supporters. As Gürakar's informative analysis shows, AKP governments have not been an exception to this tradition. On the contrary, after capturing the financial resources of the state, the AKP has used public procurement extensively to reward its supporters in return for political and financial backing. Due to the absence of effective measures to ensure accountability, transparency, and competitiveness, public procurement in Turkey has also traditionally been a major source of political corruption. Under AKP rule, this characteristic of public tenders has also remained un- changed and favoritism in the allocation of national and municipal resources has often involved varieties of corrupt practices.
After an introductory chapter that provides an overview of her study, Gürakar examines the changing nature of statebusiness relations in Turkey, a topic that has received considerable scholarly attention in recent years.1 The AKP's meteoric rise in electoral politics and consolidation of power were accompanied by the growing influence of political Islam in all aspects of the country's economy and society, including state-business...