Turkey: From the ‘Motherland’ to the ‘IMF of northern Cyprus’?

Abstract

The key argument of this article is that in the aftermath of the failure of the Annan Plan, Turkey assumed the role of the ‘IMF of northern Cyprus’, aiming to effect a deeper transformation in the economy and politics of the Turkish Cypriot community. Turkey imposed economic programmes that included austerity measures and the privatisation of state owned enterprises in order to tame the ‘cumbersome’ state in the north of Cyprus. Furthermore, AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi [Justice and Development Party]) opted for a strategy that defines northern Cyprus as an investment area. As a result of the deliberate attempts of the AKP government, Turkish capital has significantly increased its presence in state enterprises through privatisation along with infrastructure, education, construction and tourism sectors and commercial centres. The paper argues for an analysis that would locate this neoliberal restructuring in Cyprus in a global context as well as grasping the peculiarity of the state formation and the actual agency of local dynamics in the north of Cyprus. © 2014 University of Nicosia, Cyprus.