Speaker:
DR. OZLEM ARPAC ARCONIAN, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London Orfalea Center visiting Research Scholar

The talk presents a general framework to understand the broad features of the political economies of Turkey and Greece.Attention is drawn to the transformative impact of the major crises in terms of both shifts in the broad thrust of economicpolicies and the political landscape.Such a comparison is warranted for a number of reasons, despite size discrepancy andreligious differences between the two countries. Both Greece and Turkey emerged from the Ottoman Empire and share a legacy of top-down and crisis-ridden modernization. Both countries liberalized their economies in the aftermath of a military rule, Greece with the EU anchor and Turkey with the IMF. The 1980’s and 1990’s were lost decades of reform for both, marked by debt-driven growth, populist cycles and patronage networks. A system that came to an end in 2001 for Turkey and in 2008 for Greece, with significant political and economic consequences.