How to Make the Economy "Embedded" in Turkey? One question, Two Contradictory Answers

This paper aims to discuss the reasons and the consequences of the conflicts between actors with contradictory interests in the neo-liberal institution-building process in Turkey and privatization cases as one of the main components of the neo-liberalization process represents its primary focus. First, it will be outlined how the privatization program was delayed in Turkey until 2000 while it had been adopted in 1984. Secondly, on the basis of the implementation of some privatization deals after the 2000's and its effects, it will be shown (1) how the import-substitution periods' contending actors, that is to say 'traditional' employers' and workers' organizations, have became allies since the second half of the 1990s against the supporters of the neo-liberal transformation process; (2) how 'former' peasants and artisans who had been frustrated for a while by the import-substitution politics have -certainly through the proletarianization and/or the embourgeoisement processes due to neo-liberalization transformation- henceforth become supporters of the new mode of regulation. Finally, it will be shown that it is possible to distinguish the logic of action of these two camps with respect to the interpretation of the notion of embeddedness: while the first group pursues the Polanyian interpretation of the concept, for whom embeddedness refers to the inscription of economy in social, cultural and political rules that regulate goods and services production and circulation forms, the second group seems to go along with the definition made by the new economic sociology that reflects rather the integration of economic action in social and cultural networks.