Gül Berna Özcan

• BSc, MSc and PhD
• Lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London

The changing connections between business and political Islam under liberalisation can best be studied through an analysis of moral justifications, political connections in business and institutional modifications. Our evidence on energy utility privatisations through a comprehensive analysis of party connections with firm and industry specific dat...

This paper examines the degree to which political connections affect business rankings through a statistical analysis of Turkey’s industry rankings between 2003 and 2011. The analysis demonstrates that business performance is associated with connectedness through industry and firm level data. We show that political connectedness varies according to...

This special issue illuminates diverse realities of post-Soviet development in Central Asia through a multidisciplinary prism. The contributing articles are grounded in a range of social science disciplines including architecture, anthropology and geography, as well as drawing from mainstream social sciences. The analyses demonstrate how a synthesi...

This book examines the emerging entrepreneurial middle class and their relationship with the state and market building in post-Soviet Central Asia. A new entrepreneurial class occupies a central position of balance between the growing poor and disfranchised population and an increasingly unaccountable bureaucratic regime entangled with business gro...

Since the late 1960s, alternative forms of capitalization have emerged in the absence of an effective capital markets regime in Turkey. We can see these alternative forms in the failed attempts to create Anatolian holding companies through the direct investment of small savings. This article shows how Anatolian holding companies became victims of p...

This article examines business-politics ties during a shift from multi-party politics to competitive-authoritarian rule in Turkey. We conducted a longitudinal investigation of the political ties and performance ranking of top manufacturing firms in a provincial industrial centre, Gaziantep. The analysis demonstrates that major power transitions in...

What kind of economic model does China promote and can it be a new development magnet for Central Asia and beyond? Rapid economic growth improved the quality of life and ended poverty for millions of people in China. However, without understanding the key ingredients of this economic success, it is not possible to assess whether there is a model to...

This article examines the "Oyan Qazaqstan" movement along with a critique of the post-soviet authoritarian presidential system.

This article examines digital surveliiance practices and interment camps in China. Remembering the despots and injustice produced by the industrial revolution, it is time to question the new powers of the digital revolution, as states or companies. What is happening in Xinjiang is important and a sign of what can be practiced in the hands of tyrant...

This paper argues that a location or firm-based understanding is inadequate to conceptualize the process of internationalisation. The main argument is that elite ties and political space exert significant influence over corporate activity within and beyond national context. The empirical evidence of the analysis is based on the internationalisation...

Çalışma, Türk Cumhuriyetleri'ndeki girişimcilik ortamını, ekonomi politikaları ve kaynaklar yanında özellikle ülkelerin kurumsal gelişmişlik düzeyi ile ilişkilendirmektedir.

With empirical evidence gathered from three Central Asian states, we develop a typology of dynamic strategies by which firms adapt to market conditions. These are characterised by ‘sliding’ into vertical expansion, ‘skipping’ from one business into an entirely different one, horizontal expansion by ‘scooping’ up kindred functions, and ‘specialising...

Turkey's dramatic political reversal since the early 2000s rests on the conservative instincts of its pious Anatolian capitalists . We are at a crisis point, the issue at heart is not a spiritual or pious matter. It is a fundamental loss of moral righteousness and sense of justice. In my talk at the BATAS symposium on 10 March 2018 I examined the t...

This paper explores strategic entry and operational integration of emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) in mature markets through an analysis of Mexico's Cemex, Turkey's Beko and India's Tata Steel in the UK. The research points out that the UK entry decision is strategically associated with gaining reputation and prestige to become gl...

> With empirical evidence gathered from four different donor programmes launched in the Kyrgyz Republic, this study offers a critical analysis of western aid interventions. The findings point out that local effects of extensive aid exposure have weakened reforms and captured agency interests. Aggressive market liberalisation and decentralisation po...

Using the technology–organization–environment model, this study investigates the adoption and impact of information and communications technology by small and medium-sized enterprises in South Africa.

Corruption as a Last Resort is an impressive study that makes new and important contributions to the scholarship on corruption in Central Asia and across a broader range of low-income countries. The book is a powerful critique of market liberalization policies of the past two decades. McMann's research points to a strong connection between market r...

The changing connections between business and political Islam under liberalisation can best be studied through an analysis of moral justifications, political connections in business and institutional modifications. Our evidence on energy utility privatisations through a comprehensive analysis of political connections with firm and industry specific...

The growth of new capitalist classes transformed social stratification, multi-party politics and the international political orientation of Turkey since the 1980s. New business groups energized by Islam have facilitated much needed class mobility. In this process, there also emerged a confrontational split in middle class positions between Islamic...

The growth of new capitalist classes since the 1980s has transformed social stratification, multi-party politics and the international political orientation of Turkey. New business groups energized by Islam have facilitated much-needed class mobility. In this process, there has also emerged a confrontational split in middle-class positions between...

In my recent book, Building States and Markets: Enterprise Development in Central Asia (Palgrave, 2010), I argued in Chapter 4 that bazaars are the most distinct forms of new capitalist market institutions that emerged in the post-Soviet space. Numerous bazaars filled some of the gap left by Soviet distribution and allocation systems in local and r...

Bazaars are highly attractive places in most, otherwise indistinguishable, post-Soviet cities. For casual visitors as well as serious customers, they function as avenues for socialisation, entertainment and shopping. The vivid colours of bazaars, the range of sounds and the excitement were often lacking in Soviet urban culture. Much social expressi...

Despite the growing influence of patriarchy and conservative religious sentiments, the number of businesses owned and managed by women has been growing all across Central Asian since 1991. This trend is most pronounced in bazaars where major consumer goods and foodstuffs are traded in large areas laid out on a simple grid pedestrian system. The hig...

The entrepreneurial middle stratum plays a key role in income distribution, social cohesion and economic sustainability. Their position is intricately linked to the dynamics of the Mikado game and its reallocation rounds, but small business entrepreneurs operate in an increasingly autonomous market domain. Compared to the oligarchs and courtiers or...

Interest representation and collective action among private business owners is still nascent in Central Asia. In response to poor legal protection, unjust inspection charges and the arbitrariness of tax and customs duties, small businesses mainly rely on individual solutions. While large businesses exert great influence in shaping the underlying ru...

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the Kazakh poet and essayist Abay saw his steppe society in decay, besieged on the one side by the victorious Russian Empire with its modernising tools of railways, telegrams and science in education, and on the other side by the dissolution of moral values and cultural integrity. His long lament became famous...

The collapse of the Soviet economic order and its colossal bureaucratic system brought about irreversible changes to the lives of millions of people in a vast territory. On the one hand, the dissolution of its governance mechanisms had devastating effects on regional economies and people’s livelihoods as Soviet enterprises and markets rapidly dissi...

Immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain, a wide range of Western aid initiatives, governmental programmes and non-governmental organisations rushed in to shape political alliances and new markets, and to support social development in the former communist bloc. With varying missions and capacities these groups sometimes left positive marks bu...

On ‘Homo Sovieticus’, Aleksandr Zinoviev, 19854 Moral harmony is an invisible yet formidable part of state and market building. Moral polarisation brings societal upheavals and conflicts. Modern state-building processes not only require national identity formation and power consolidation but also a societal moral harmony. In order to forge this, as...

A new entrepreneurial class emerged as a consequence of capitalist market building and political patronage across the whole of post-Soviet Central Asia. This class rested on access obtained and opportunities generated by the political elite. Overall the relationship between this emerging entrepreneurial class and the political elite defines the cha...

Prelude Labour Day celebrations were stormy at the headquarters of Migros in 1994. The streets of Kadiköy, a middle-class mixed residential and office neighbourhood across the Bosporus from the prestige business district of Istanbul, were blocked with heavy traffic as demonstrators indulged in the routine clashes with police. Reporters on the scene...

In recent years, Turkey has witnessed a new form of corporate finance in which companies, commonly called ‘Islamic’, borrow directly from lenders without using any financial intermediaries. Trust among lenders and borrowers has initiated market exchange, secured deals and lowered transaction costs. This paper claims that the base of trust in direct...

Simple neoliberal approaches ignore the importance and power that the state has in making decentralization effective. This is shown through a critical analysis of local economic development in which evidence, from three projects in a second-rank Turkish industrial centre, Kayseri, was used. Turkey’s recent moves from highly centralized systems of g...

This study explores the prospects of decentralisation and consensus building within the context of local economic development in Turkey. The broad theoretical concern of this research is the tension between the centre and periphery in the governance structure of Turkey. Over 80 interviews from three rapidly growing medium-sized cities, Denizli, Gaz...

RetailinginSouthernEuropeancitieshasbeenexperiencingrapidchangeinrecentyearswiththeintroductionoflargeoutlets,ledinitiallybyWesternEuropeancompanies.However,littledetailedinformationandinterpretationisavailableabouttheexperienceofSouthernEuropeancountries.Thereareseveralareasthatdeserveattentionincludingtheimpactofmultinationalretailersonretailandw...

The Turkish retail industry is experiencing a transformation towards larger-scale retailing. This restructuring has occurred at a time when an assertive corporate private sector has begun to look ready to take the leading role from the state in the development process; and when efforts (real and perceived) towards a cautious and gradual retreat of...

The literature on small firms has given a new importance to entrepreneurial arid business networks in recent years; it is emphasized that networks strengthen the innovative flexibility and competitiveness of small firms. This paper, however, argues that the networks amongst entrepreneurs are not always innovative and may even bring some impediments...

The most popular panacea for economic rejuvenation is the harnessing of the entrepreneurial spirit of small firm owners. The theory behind this is that flexible small companies can counter the supposed ‘dead hand’ of big business and generate jobs and income. They not only provide wealth for successful risk takers, but also bring prosperity for loc...

Ankara'nin Cumhuriyet donemi imar planlamasi ve ilk sehircilik uygulamaları.