Shortly after its official declaration as a candidate state in December 1999 Helsinki Summit, Turkey was crashed by a major domestic economic crisis in 2001, the most devastating one since the end of the Second World War. In fact, the state’s capacity to deal with crisis situations was already proven weak in the aftermath of the August 1999 earthquake. The collapse of the banking system further downgraded its credibility due to the unveiled corruption of ruling elites and overnight impoverishment of the society. Seven years later, the Turkish economy has been threatened by the global financial crisis which was claimed to be the strongest since the Great Depression. Although lessons taken from the previous crisis have contributed to a well-prepared institutionalization of the finance system, statistical figures show that the hits by the global crisis were not absent at all. Countrywide protest events took place with mass participation of workers and shopkeepers that occasionally turned into violent clashes with the police in 2001, whereas it is hard to say that the scale of the social unrest caused by economic downturn was as massive and visible following 2008. The aim of the paper is to compare the social implications of the two crises in Turkey from a contentious politics perspective. By means of a protest event analysis covering these periods, I will not only attempt to measure the scope of the protest mobilization but also observe the reaction by the political authorities crystallized in policing of the events. By doing so, I will provide a different angle for looking at the short-term evolution of the Turkish socio-political setting in the wake of Europeanization.
