The Labour Market Implications of Large-Scale Restructuring in the Banking Sector in Turkey

This paper is concerned with the causes, timing and effects of banking sector restructuring and financial crisis in Turkey. The main focus of the study, however, is on labour market implications of the banking crisis and banking reform in recent years. The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 presents a brief summary of the macroeconomic background to the latest banking sector crisis in Turkey. In section 3, the efforts of recent Turkish Governments towards restructuring and rehabilitation of the banking sector are considered. Then, following a statistical review of the main features of the Turkish banking sector, section 4 focuses on the labour market problems that can be linked to the Government's restructuring and rehabilitation programme in banking. Section 5 draws some lessons from this restructuring programme. Finally, section 6 concludes with some remarks on future prospects in the banking sector.