Privatisation drive hits a wall with the public

Privatisation drive hits a wall with the public

One of the most striking findings in the survey concerned the question, “Have the privatisations carried out in Turkey served the public interest or the interests of certain groups?” Only 22.7 per cent believe they served the public interest. 57.3 per cent think they served certain groups’ interests, while 20 per cent said they had no opinion.

Respondents were also asked, “Did you know that in public-private partnership (PPP) projects such as the Osmangazi Bridge and the Third Bridge, when traffic guarantees are not met, the Treasury pays the difference to the companies?”

33.2 per cent said yes, 21.5 per cent said they had heard about it but did not know the details, and 45.3 per cent said they did not know. Finally, participants were asked, “After learning this information, how did your view of PPPs change?” The share saying “more negative” rose to 60.3 per cent, while 30 per cent said their opinion had not changed.

Based on this survey, it appears that a large majority in the country believe privatisations are not carried out for the public good. However, a lack of information about privatisations is also noticeable. Another point that can be drawn from the results is that the opposition has failed to present a strong public-oriented political perspective against privatisations.

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A BREAK IS NEEDED

On the latest survey, BUPAR Research Director Assoc. Prof. Onur Alp Yılmaz shared his assessment with BirGün.

Yılmaz, who said “The fact that privatisation, public-private partnership projects and similar economic policies have not turned into a strong field of political conflict in Turkey despite their broad social impact is an issue we need to reflect on”, included the following statements in his evaluation:

“In the post-1980 period, the Turkish economy has been integrated into the global capitalist system on the basis of liberalised capital movements, financialisation and dependence on external resources. This integration model produced and imposed a policy framework that presented practices such as privatisation and public-private partnerships not as ideological preferences but as technical necessities. Concepts such as access to international financial markets, investor confidence, fiscal discipline and budget sustainability were removed from political debate and coded almost as divine commandments. Thus alternative policy options were structurally narrowed and the political character of economic choices was rendered invisible. This can be read as the manifestation in Turkey of the classic neoliberal depoliticisation mechanism.

The second dimension of this depoliticisation is the failure to institutionalise a system-opposing economic alternative in the political sphere. In Turkey, a comprehensive development programme against the growth model based on integration with international finance capital, a perspective of re-nationalisation or an alternative public financing regime has not been placed at the centre of political competition. Opposition parties also mostly produce criticisms and policies that do not go beyond the framework of investor confidence, market stability and fiscal discipline. Therefore criticisms of privatisation or PPP policies remain at the level of technical critiques of governance practice rather than producing systemic opposition. In an environment where an alternative is not institutionalised, economic discontent does not turn into political mobilisation.

Third, the fact that political competition in Turkey is structured primarily around identity, security and cultural polarisation rather than distribution and class relations limits the politicisation of these issues. When the main lines of conflict revolve around ethnic, cultural or identity axes, issues such as the transfer of public assets, budget allocation or fiscal-national sovereignty become secondary. Distributional conflicts are suppressed by identity-based conflicts. Therefore even if economic choices produce consequences affecting daily life, they cannot become the main determinant of voting behaviour.

NEITHER QUESTIONING NOR ALLOWING IT TO BE QUESTIONED

Ultimately, the output of this process is the decisive role of the hegemonic narrative constructed by the government. Economic policies are reframed within a discourse of development, mega projects, national pride, global competition, world leadership and a strong state. Within this frame, privatisation or PPP projects are presented not as transfers of resources to certain companies or global capital or as budget policy, but as instruments of the country’s growth drive. Thus economic choices are attached to a narrative of ‘national pride’ and reduced to technical details. Political debate does not focus on the conflict between the economic model itself and Turkey’s sovereign rights, its right to speak over structures built on its own soil or its freedom to decide where to spend its budget, but on areas such as the model’s managerial ‘success’ or ‘failure’, which can easily be turned to the government’s advantage through statistical manipulation.

The resulting structure is one in which high levels of social discontent coexist with low levels of political mobilisation. Even if significant segments of society are distant from privatisations or guarantee payments, this discontent does not turn into a system-opposing political line. Because economic policies have been pushed outside the field of political choice, the capacity to produce alternatives has weakened and identity-based competition has overshadowed economic conflicts.

In conclusion, the fact that privatisation and public-private partnership practices have not become central to political competition in Turkey can be explained not by a simple communication failure but by the combined effect of structural dependence created by integration with international finance capital, the lack of an alternative economic vision and the hegemonic form of politics. Therefore despite their broad social impact, these policies are perceived not as fundamental choices determining the direction of the system within the ‘big picture’ constructed by the government, but as details related to management techniques.

I suppose this can be illustrated by the fact that in the army, your right step in civilian life is replaced by your left step. Because there is a meaning in reconstructing a person almost from their very first step: breaking them from civilian habits, disrupting their daily rhythm and reshaping them within a new order, rebuilding them almost from scratch through a founding intervention…

In Turkey, the opposition needs to adopt a similar approach. For a long time, a significant part of political competition has been conducted within the same global economic framework. The economic policies implemented by the government are criticised, but the international financial integration model, growth regime or development paradigm on which these policies are based are not fundamentally questioned, and therefore the public is not encouraged to question them either.

For this reason, political competition is often reduced not to proposing a different economic orientation but to claiming better management of the existing system. This is clearly not a political but a technical debate.

Onur Alp Yılmaz

THE WINNER REPRODUCES THE GROUND

This situation limits the opposition’s capacity to produce a structural alternative. Because a political line that aims to integrate into the global financial system to the same extent or accepts the same macroeconomic framework as given struggles to offer society a new sense of direction. When the difference between different management promises and different system proposals disappears in the eyes of voters, political competition becomes nothing more than a technical management debate. This continually reproduces the ground on which the government, which has been winning for 25 years, prevails: not a ground where people choose the best option for themselves among alternatives, but one where they choose the one closest to them among similar options, the one that appeals most to their emotions.

In this context, it can be argued that the opposition needs a founding rupture that can be expressed through the metaphor of the ‘left step’. This rupture refers not only to criticising current policies but to defining a new starting point in areas such as economic sovereignty, development model, state capacity and public interest. Such an approach would require opening up for debate the limits, conditions and social costs of integration into the global economic system and redefining economic choices not as technical necessities but as political preferences. This would also force the government to make a choice and that choice would generate costs for it either nationally or internationally, perhaps both.”

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Satma hevesi halka çarptı, published in BirGün newspaper on February 16, 2026.