TURKISH VS MEXICAN EXPERIENCE WITH PRIVATISATION

İsmail BAKAN (Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University)
İsmail Hakkı ERASLAN (Boğaziçi University )
Mehmet SARAC (Boğaziçi University )

Turkey experienced impressive progress in terms of privatization policy somehow. The government of Turkey is very keen on this issue as well. The pace of privatization is also steadily accelerating in Turkey. However, especially uneven political decisions, inconsistent economic structure and successive financial crisis, insufficient legal infrastructure, and opposition from interest groups have hindered the privatization progress of Turkey for a long time. As a result of these, Turkey has not taken necessary and enough steps for this crucial policy.

As for the Mexican case, her experiment of hyper-privatization demonstrates how a semi-authoritarian political system is influential in implementing comprehensive and systematic privatization program over a short space of time. Unlike other developing countries, Mexico experienced a gradual approach to privatization; enterprises were promoted, the social and private sectors were encouraged to participate, and the public was made aware of the importance and urgency of the process. Legal and regulatory frameworks were established to achieve transparency in each stage of privatization.

The main aim of this paper is to describe and analysis the privatization process conducted in Turkey from a comparative perspective to address the question why some countries, particularly Mexico, performed rapid and successful privatization programme while others have been slower to adopt this tranformation progress.

For this purpose, the paper consists of three main parts. The first part of the paper gives the general description about privatization and its principles, and the common objectives of privatization concept. The second part consists of sectoral distribution of privatization, namely: infrastructure, financial sector, primary sector, and manufacturing. The third part of the paper analyzes the structural adjustment policies and privatization process in Turkey during the last two decades. The study also demonstrates the international context that played a critical role in pattering the particular direction and depth of adjustment policies. In the last part of the paper some conclusions and recommendations are drawn. The case of Mexico shows similarities to Turkish case but the concluding remarks reveals many differences between two countries.