Paper short abstract:

Based on Sara Roy's de-development theory, the paper explores the reasons for, and an analysis of, the shift from authoritarian development to de-development in Turkey's periphery.

Paper long abstract:

Critical scholarship on Turkey's socio-economic development during the Islamic-rooted AKP government's reign has largely focused on the lags of development processes and uneven development. As the neoliberal hegemony consolidates its power through the rule of the AKP, its socio-economic relations with society have been rapidly shifting from authoritarian development to deliberate de-development of specific economic sectors and geo-political localities; as a final act to crush, alienate and break the agency of the counterhegemony. As Sara Roy explains, de-development "not only distorts the development process but undermines it entirely". State tactics include: population displacements, the 'de-skilling' and underuse of an ethnic/gender labour force, the disintegration of the economic sector in the periphery, the infringement of cultural land and water sources, the 'proletarianization' of the labour force and the purposeful "denial of access to the means of production as a form of collective punishment". In the case of Turkey, the de-development process has seen the closure and ban of Kurdish and other non-state social-welfare providers, mass purges and arrests of school teachers and academics, the degradation of the cultural and rural economic landscape of the southeast, the gentrification and commodification of neighbourhoods such as Istanbul's Tarlabaşı and green spaces such as Gezi Park, the criminalisation of non-AKP affiliated trade unions, the military blockades on Kurdish and minority economic centres, and the attempts at the elimination of Kurdish grassroots activities. These are deliberate strategies to shrink productivity and deny agency in the periphery and cannot be attributed to uneven economic development.