Investigation of economic measures taken during the pandemic process in Turkey in terms of distribution relations

Neoliberal economic policies, which affect the distributional relations between labor and capital, began to be implemented in the Turkish economy in the 1980s and accelerated in the 2000s. In the 2000s, under the name of flexibilization, flexible working forms that reduce the wage income of the working class, lead to an unregulated and irregular working life for them and deprive them of their union rights were legalized, while the state began to withdraw from public service provision in order to open up new areas of valuation for the capital class. These adjustments had an impact on the change in the proportional share of labor and capital in GDP, with the proportional share of labor in GDP falling significantly in the 2016-2022 period. Periods such as crises and pandemics have been periods of reorganization of distribution relations. Therefore, this study focuses on the pandemic period and seeks to answer the question of the course of distributional relations in this period. This study analyzes the measures and regulations taken by the government to limit the negative economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was effective in the Turkish economy in the 2020-2021 period, and evaluates the impact of these measures and regulations on distributional relations. When the measures taken and regulations made by the government are evaluated in terms of distributional relations, it is concluded that the labor sector suffered job loss and income loss, laborers were forced to face illness and death because they were kept working despite the rapid spread of the epidemic, while industrial capital and bank capital, which were examined in the study, increased their profitability levels.