The privatization process in Turkey: the case of tobacco industry.

Abstract

The dissertation is articulated into three parts. The first presents the general framework under which the theory of privatization is approached. It includes the first steps for the establishment of the privatization and it depicts the most important reasons according to which the governments of various states followed it. In addition, it includes the methods of privatization and the policy dilemmas that revealed on both mixed economies and former centrally planned ones, by the time they were in a transition process. After that, in the second part of the present thesis, there are three further divisions. The first one is presenting the privatization process that took place in Turkey from 1980s and until the election of the present Prime Minister, Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The second one is an overall assessment of the privatization process in Turkey and encompasses the legal and institutional reforms in order the Turkish privatization program to be successfully implemented; the role of the agencies and the rest actors in the Turkish society with respect to privatization and the impact of corruption during that process. The third one is specifying in the case of tobacco industry by depicting the tendencies in the market, the holders of the market shares and the role of the government until the full privatization of the former publicly owned tobacco industry named TEKEL takes place. Finally the last part of the present dissertation broadens the issue of tobacco by focusing on the trends and prospects after the privatization of TEKEL with regards to unemployment, public health and environmental responsibilities.