Interlocking Directorates and Capitalist Class Formations in Turkey: A Study on the Listed Firms in Istanbul Stock Exchange and Istanbul Chamber of Industry (ISO 500)

In recent years, corporate networks and board interlocks have drawn considerable attention in academic works and are the subject to growing research worldwide. This paper aims to contribute the existing literature with a modest exploration into the structure of the corporate governance network and interlocking directorates in Turkey on which systematic research are extremely limited. Unsurprisingly, a few number of exising studies merely focus on technical/practical issues such as problem of coordination and innovation, building the ways to decrease transaction costs, experience sharing and so on, in dealing with the corporate networks of Turkish companies. In this study we will, at first, develop a critique of those mainstream approaches to the corporate networks in Turkey on the basis of their shortcomings in explaining/discussing the political economic consequences of those ties. On the other hand, through an empirical study investigates the interlocking directorship and the capital relations among Turkish companies listed in Istanbul Stock Exchange and ISO 500 (Istanbul Chamber of Industry) respectively, this paper question whether those corporate-corporate connections have played significant roles in the process of capitalist class formation in Turkey.