The Economic Policies of the AKP Government: Rabbits from a Hat?

How can we account for the priority that Turkey's "Islam-sensitive" government has placed on adhering to the IMF's prescriptions for macroeconomic stability and fiscal restraint in lieu of its electoral promises to pursue a justice-oriented social agenda and aggressively tackle problems of poverty and unemployment? In this article this question is answered by analyzing the challenges posed by international factors (debt sustainability, pressures by the IMF and the EU), as well as domestic factors (the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) own unpreparedness, oppositional tactics by the secularist establishment) that have shaped the AKP government's economic policies.