A regime financed by trillions of liras in tenders

The total value of the tenders made between 2002, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power, and 2011 is 350.7 billion liras. The total value of the tenders held since 2011 is 3.3 trillion liras. Compared to the first 10 years, when the economy seemed relatively stable and the government attached importance to legitimacy, the transfer of public resources increased 10-fold in the second 10 years, when the form of government underwent radical changes and its repressive character came to the fore. This is a strong indication of the foundations of the regime. This is where the main causes of corruption and decay should be sought. For, aside from the central government, a ‘principality regime’ has been established in which hundreds of autonomous institutions and organizations distribute public resources to the interest networks around them.

The mayor of Mersin's Toroslar district, Abdurrahman Yıldız from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told Medyascope how far the tender regime had gone. The new mayor, who took over from the MHP after five terms in office, called the Court of Accounts and said, “Our audit reports for two years are missing. If there is no, come and audit us.” Of course, there was no response. Thousands of acres of land are missing, he says. He gives the following example regarding the tenders: “In 2022, garbage collection was given to a company for 7.2 million liras. In 2024, we gave it to a company for half the price. Another incident is the purchase of five tons of Turkish delight to distribute at the funeral of martyrs. There is no such product.”

Yıldız dramatically summarizes the new system created by the tender regime: “No one from within the municipality or from any state institution has come out and said 'what are you doing'. No one interfered or asked anyone. They did it according to their minds.”

What happened in Toroslar, a district of 320,000 inhabitants, is just one example. You must have heard dozens of them. When you look at the whole picture, you can better understand why the term 'principality' is used.

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The tender regime is the cornerstone of the AKP's economic and political regime. A kind of 'corporatist' structure has been built. This gigantic machine, extending from the center to the smallest local unit, works for a single purpose: Tendering every day for everything from roads to hospitals, garbage collection to landscaping plants, car rentals to catering services. In other words, every day hundreds of institutions make thousands of companies and people partners in the central and local budgets.

If we put the regime into concrete figures, the following picture emerges. The number of completed tenders and contract amounts of 45 institutions between 2010 and 2024 are as follows:

In the last 10 years, 3.3 trillion liras of public funds were transferred through 1.7 million tenders organized by 45 institutions alone. The importance of municipalities is immediately visible. Even the Higher Education Council (YÖK) competes with institutions responsible for infrastructure works. It ranks 5th. You can read most of the current problems in this table. For example, with all this money spent, what about the quality of public services? Because there is almost no area that is not subject to tender.

In short, public institutions have been completely transformed into 'principalities', autonomous thanks to the tender regime, where no one touches anyone else, and everyone carries out the sharing in their own sphere of dominance. Each of them is a pile of loot worth billions of liras. The distribution of posts and positions among a certain coterie has more to do with this than salaries.

'Principalities' are at the center of a network of companies clustered around them. To put this into perspective, let us examine the table below, which shows how many companies have benefited from tenders in 40 different fields in the last 10 years:

Considering that the number of corporate taxpayers in Turkey is around 1.2 million, it is interesting to note that 595,956 companies have benefited from public tenders in the last 10 years. At first glance, some may say, “How nice, tenders are spreading to the grassroots.” However, a closer look at the details reveals that most companies were born together with the AKP's tender regime. For example, two-thirds of the 1533 private security companies that received tenders were established after 2010. With one or two exceptions, the top 20 companies dominating the tenders are close to the ruling parties.

In construction, which is more popular, 68,744 different companies received tenders. Nearly 1,000 of them share relatively large contracts. The remaining thousands are scattered across provinces and districts. They have parceled out their hunting grounds in provinces and districts. Even in small districts, 4-5 companies do business without stepping on each other's toes. Of course, their owners are also influential families in local politics. We see similar results in all sectors.

Let me give one last table. We understand to what extent the loss of large municipalities in the local elections has shaken the government's 'principality regime':

These are the municipalities and their affiliated institutions with the highest number of tenders in 10 years. The total amount is 680 billion liras. Three of them are still run by the ruling AKP. The share of municipalities and affiliated organizations under the CHP in this tender amount is 590 billion liras. When big cities were lost in 2019, the networks of interest focused on Anatolian cities. This is partly why the number of preposterous tender schemes that are frequently on the agenda has increased. There has been a kind of 'interest network migration' and frictions, showdowns and denunciations have intensified among those who have not felt the need to enter each other's space until now.

Because the tender regime is also an abundant exchange that consolidates the 'social base' of the government. When it fails, the whole system is shaken. This is the strongest but also the most fragile part of the regime.