Neoliberalism and Legal Regulations in the Tobacco Sector in Türkiye

Şafak Çubukçu Ö.

1st International Canadian Scientific Research Congress, Toronto, Kanada, 1 - 03 Mayıs 2024, ss.422, (Özet Bildiri)

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Toronto
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Kanada
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.422
  • Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Turkish agriculture has gone through a process of neoliberal restructuring in the last forty years. Starting with 2000s, implementation of neoliberal policies, including privatization of State Economic Enterprises, liberalization of foreign trade, and changing role of the state in the markets of agricultural crops, has accelerated. As both an important item of export revenues and employment generator for masses, tobacco was among these crops and state-market relations have been significantly restructured in the tobacco sector in the two decades following 2001 crisis.

Legal regulations play an important role in changing policies in political economy, either for preparing the background for their implementation or filling in the gaps for already implemented ones. Therefore, examination of laws and law-making processes in a country is a solid means of reading historical developments in its political economy. Whereas the Tobacco Law of 2002 marks the beginning of the two decades, within which the above-mentioned restructuring took place, the Tobacco Law of 2022 marks the end of this period. By focusing on these two laws, and the amendments in between, this paper aims to analyse the historical developments in the tobacco sector under neoliberalism, from their designing to their consequences.

While the legal texts underline overall characteristics of the policies, the records of parliamentary debates provide the researchers with a detailed information on dominant discourses, challenges against them, and different interpretations by various political points of view. This study suggests that economic policies cannot be grasped without a reference to political dynamics, and that the changes in the tobacco sector in Türkiye well exemplifies this, through a qualitative analysis of the laws and parliamentary records of the law-making processes.