"This study explores labour relations in Turkey under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) in the first ten years of the twenty-first century. Labour policies followed by the JDP, which is conservative in terms of socio-cultural policy and liberal in terms of economic policy, bring to unionization a government stance that may be defined as authoritarian flexibilization, that is, flexibility in labour policies in the government's favour, but at the expense of the worker. The JDP has deepened the neoliberal heritage and experience of the period after the 1980s by appropriating them for its own anti-labour purposes. The JDP's effort to institutionalize flexibility in terms of both labour legislation and actual labour relations has actually resulted in an adversial attitude toward unionisation. The party has accomplished this goal by merging its conservative roots with its neoliberal tendency. As a result, unionisation has significantly decreased under JDP rule. In this study, the roots and basic characteristics of labour policies in the period of the JDP are discussed, based upon an examination of individual and collective labour relations."

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