Politics of Favoritism in Public Procurement in Turkey

"In this book Esra Ceviker Gurakar shows how in the last few decades public procurement rules in Turkey have been designed to enable transfer of rents through non-transparent and non-competitive mechanisms. Gurakar uses a unique data set of public procurement contracts and meticulously constructs a mapping of politically connected firms to show the pervasive presence of firms with affiliations to the ruling AKP and even to opposition parties, in localities where the latter have some power among winners of public procurement contracts in the 2000s in Turkey. She also shows that politically connected firms win contracts more frequently when less competitive procedures are used. A must-read book on state-business relations in Turkey." (Izak Atiyas, Professor of Economics, Sabanci University, Turkey, and Director of the TUSIAD-Sabanci University Competitiveness Forum, Turkey)

This book, through an analysis of 49,355 high value public procurement contracts awarded between 2004 and 2011, provides systematic evidence on favoritism in public procurement in Turkey.This book, through an analysis of 49,355 high value public procurement contracts awarded between 2004 and 2011, provides systematic evidence on favoritism in public procurement in Turkey. Public procurement is one of the main areas where the government and the private sector interact extensively and is thus open to favoritism and corruption. In Turkey, the new Public Procurement Law, which was drafted with the pull of the EU-IMF-WB nexus, has been amended more than 150 times by the AKP government. In addition to examining favoritism, this book also demonstrates how the legal amendments have increased the use of less competitive procurement methods and discretion in awarding contracts. The results reveal that the AKP majority government has used public procurement as an influential tool both to increase its electoral success, build its own elites and finance politics. The use of public procurement for rent creation and distribution is found to be particularly extensive in the construction and the services sector through the TOKİ projects and the Municipal procurements.