Pathways Through Financial Crisis: Turkey

Turkey's deep financial crisis in 2000–2001 implicated the International Monetary Fund program, adopted in 1999, while the IMF was associated with the successful 2001 recovery program. This article, through studying three critical interventions, finds that the IMF's impact on the policy choices available to Turkey's policymakers varied according to the history of the IMF's engagement with Turkey, the interests of major shareholders in the IMF, and the credibility of Turkey's leaders in the eyes of the IMF. The IMF's engagement substantially affected domestic politics in Turkey by strengthening the voice of economic technocrats within the government. The IMF thus became a contested actor in domestic politics. The crisis had very significant negative economic and social effects, which contributed to a deep political change in 2002.