Varieties of Neoliberal Communitarianism in the Cities of Anatolia-Turkey

Studies focusing on the concept of neoliberalism from economic and human geography disciplines largely agree that there is a need to study neoliberalism with its variegated forms at a variety of scales of analysis. Hence, whether understood as a package of policies or institutions, as a form of social rule, an ideological tool for competitive globalization or a mechanism of rescaling and restructuring, neoliberalism has different variants. In the literature, different scholars have pointed out the need to better conceptualize these variants, or the need for more concrete and microanalyses of neoliberalism. This paper is an attempt to decipher the local forms of neoliberalism in the Anatolian cities of Turkey. The examples pertaining to the cities of Anatolia exhibit different forms of the embedded nature of the neoliberalization process in Anatolia, Turkey. These forms of embeddedness, in fact, become visible through a collective effort that is organized in the cities of Anatolia by a variety of actors imbued with communitarian values and strategies for the sake of making the city competitive, not only in the national, but also in international and global scales.