Restructuring before Privatization: An Examination of the Turkish State-Owned Enterprises

Though Turkey is one of the initial countries that started a privatization program, the pace of the implementation of the privatization program has remained quite low. Many state-owned enterprises (SOEs) stayed for a long time in the privatization program and many others are not even included in the privatization program. This situation arises the questions such as “what are the criteria for the SOEs to be included into the privatization portfolio” and “what kind of restructuring processes are these SOEs going through before the privatization”. Because the selection of the SOEs to be privatized and the associated restructuring directly affect the success of the privatizations. There is no study on this topic to our knowledge for Turkey. This study aims at filling this gap by examining which SOEs were included into the privatization portfolio and what kind of restructuring processes these SOEs underwent over the 1990-2001 period. The findings of the study suggest that Turkish governments decided to privatize the SOEs that were easier to be privatized. Another finding is that the SOEs underwent a restructuring especially in the following year of being included into the privatization portfolio.