State, Political Parties and Labour Unions under the AKP Rule: Practices, Networks and Resources

This paper studies the relationship between the trade union field and the political field in Turkey under the government of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) from 2002 to 2015. The transfers and networks between labour union representatives and political activists enable their capacity to become dominant actors in their respective fields. The intervention of the AKP government reinforces and accelerates these transfers. New networks composed of labour unions, employers’ associations, political parties and the government emerge. As to the contentious actors, the local and international dynamics generate a plurality of configurations. Even though AKP networks and the political capital accumulated through AKP, the latter lets actors become dominant in their fields on national level. The networks enabling transfers are constructed independently from the AKP power at the local level. Autonomous spaces for resistance among labour unions and left-wing activists emerge. This research is primarily based on a fieldwork that involves observation and nearly a hundred of semi-structured interviews in the three labour union confederations, conducted between December 2011 and April 2014.