Fiscal expropriation in Turkey under the rule of Erdoğan

Abstract

This work signifies an attempt to elaborate on the concrete workings of fiscal policy in today’s Turkey through the notion of primitive accumulation. The subject matter is a political regime that constitutes itself increasingly through coercion. And to understand the political regime’s constitution in its wholeness, its concrete existence in its relations with the economic life surrounding it, primitive accumulation – the notion that construes coercion as an economic power – is necessary. Furthermore, since the notion of class struggle is inherent to primitive accumulation, the latter notion also elicits to reflect on the formation of the state as it hinges on the class society. The notion of primitive accumulation reveals the class power that the state predicates and the concrete ends that this predicate sights. Political coercion can’t be comprehended separately from the capitalist accumulation, and in the case of Turkey, their unity finds expression most clearly in the practices of fiscal expropriation. Throughout the work, fiscal expropriation is examined through three specific forms it takes: the unity of over-taxation with growing indebtedness of the state, public procurement regime, and public–private partnerships. All of them signify the proletarianisation and further impoverishment of the people just as in the era when Karl Marx has drawn up the notion of primitive accumulation.