Politics of Favoritism in Public Procurement in Turkey: Reconfigurations of Dependency Networks in the AKP Era by Esra Çeviker Gürakar (review)

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 unchanged 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 state-business 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 relations. Until the AKP's historic electoral victory in 2002, the pro-secular governing parties and business elites were the principal actors in state-business relations. The Turkish Industry and Business Association (TÜSİAD, from the Turkish Türk Sanayicileri ve İş İnsanları Derneği), a business organization that was formed by Turkey's largest companies, supported secularism at home and close relations with the West abroad. After 2002, state-business relations underwent a fundamental change: Although TÜSİAD remained active, new business associations led by pious Muslim entrepreneurs gained increasing prominence in representing business interests. Among these, the Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (MÜSİAD, from the Turkish Müstakil Sanayici ve İş Adamları Derneği) emerged as a potential rival to TÜSİAD due to its close ties with the government. The author notes that while some MÜSİAD members became AKP electoral candidates, AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other prominent party officials were frequently featured as keynote speakers in the annual meetings of MÜSİAD and other Islamic business associations. In return for providing political support to the AKP, the "socially religious but economically liberal" Islamic business associations enjoyed preferential treatment and favoritism in the procurement tenders (p. 17).

Gürakar next discusses the legal and institutional contexts of public procurement in Turkey. From 1983 to 2003, the purchase of goods and services by the government from the private sector was formally regulated by the Public Procurement Law (PPL) No. 2886, which was enacted to ensure transparency, accountability, and competitiveness in the awarding of contracts. But the law failed to achieve its intended goals and governing parties continued to use public procurement for political gain. In January 2003, new legislation, PPL No. 4734, went into effect largely as a result of the growing demands from the international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, along with the European Union, for a major overhaul in Turkey's public procurement...