The foundations of economic and financial crises have solely been examined vis-à-vis populist macroeconomic policies and the political consequences of such crises (especially the maintenance of democracy and political stability) have been investigated in the literature. Yet, the social motives and the inherent political rationale that lied behind the so-called misleading macroeconomic policies have not been analyzed for a congruent comprehension of economic crises and for the design of effective counteractive policies.

Similarly, the economic implications of political crises should also be examined further. The analysis of this intermingled relationship shows us that in time the nature of political crises have changed just like the transformation of the nature of economic crises. Such inherent changes of political crises can be attributed to the changing social structure especially to urban domination, to democratic deepening and to the globalization of democratic systems.

There had been 10 notable political crises and 6 major economic crises in the last half-century of Turkish history. All political crises in Turkey involved a priori economic slowdown. Some of them even followed economic crises, especially sharp devaluations. Secondly, all political crises had social implications as they all occurred as a result of severe welfare losses of the civilian and military bureaucracy –Vis-à-Vis inflation. Thirdly, recently the nature of political crises has changed as crises do not involve overt military interventions any more. On the contrary consecutive coups have enhanced the deepening of democracy, as voters are generally inclined to react to military interventions. Moreover, broad-based coalition governments have been successful in avoiding coups.

Our research demonstrates that all economic crises have occurred during populist right-wing governments. Again all economic crises involved budget deficit problems, whilst some of them also involved foreign debt crises. Naturally all economic crises had political consequences. The political consequences of economic crises had been overt coups (the first 3) or tacit military interventions. Yet in the last 20 years such political consequences have been transformed to be solely early elections.