Constructing Turkey: emergent economic geographies of an emerging market

Abstract

This thesis examines the social and material construction of Turkey as an emerging market. It does so through the lens of discourses, knowledge and practices within the emerging markets industry. Furthermore this study also examines the power geometries between different actors and centres of evaluation to understand how these circumstances influence the production of knowledge about Turkey. Set within debates on emerging markets and geographies of finance, the thesis focuses on Turkey’s bond and equity markets. It makes use of a variety of methodologies including semistructured interviews, textual analysis and the analysis of published data from various sources. The underlying argument of the thesis rests on the mutually formative nature of the territorialities and relationalities of discourses, knowledge and practices. Discourses shape what is regarded as knowledge. Knowledge of Turkey informs the discourses around the Turkish economy and so shape the nature of, and the ways in which, economic practices are put to work. Economic practices produce new knowledge, which in turn informs the production of new discourses. These discourses, knowledge and practices are, in turn, shaped by their own territorial and relational geographies (e.g. the power geometries of the Turkish emerging market industry). Thus, the thesis explores not only the social, political and economic dynamics taking place within Turkey and its emerging links with Europe, the Middle East and the wider geo-political economy, but explores how discourses and knowledge about these developments are also the product of the socio-spatial relations of the emerging market industry. The thesis sets out to show how all of these influences both respond to and shape developments on the ground, and so actively contribute to the emergent economic geographies of Turkey as an emerging market