Nowadays there is disinformation in Turkey that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's intervention, has started to uphold a statist, closed and autocratic economy in which national characteristics prevail, instead of a pro-market and outward-oriented one. Normally, I would not elaborate on this baseless and self-denying assertion that is so far from the truth. However, this disinformation has been reiterated so often and for such a long time that I need to give an answer to it.

Before anything else, the political path that Erdoğan has always adopted is one that is a far cry from statist traditions, but it is a liberal and conservative one that highlights private property. It would not be satisfactory to explain Erdoğan's approach with such traditional and global definitions.

Although this path is not a national one, it supports a local, fair and outward-oriented economy. In this regard, it considers non-monopolized private property as its baseline. In Turkey's economic history, the Kemalist tradition upholds a statist economic development, highlights a statist planning and sometimes advocates fascist and corporatist statism. The Republican People's Party (CHP) is a political party and has a tradition that is the historic and current representative of this path in Turkey. In that regard, the CHP is not a social democrat party in a real sense, paradoxically; it is the main inheritor of statist, corporatist and fascist lines in Turkey.

The liberal right, however, has emerged as a response to this understanding and has rejected both a statist and a militarist, closed and national economic understanding. First of all, it needs to be underlined that Erdoğan is a politician who adopts this basic line. But like all politicians who made history and left their mark on the periods in which they lived, Erdoğan embraced a unique path that observed national interests and understood the characteristics of time. Unlike what Erdoğan's opponents claim, this unique path is not based on a statist, autarchic and closed economy, but encapsulates the complete opposite of such claims. In short, this is an economic understanding that highlights private property, rejects a monopolistic statism and prioritizes global capital inflows in a competitive way. This approach is also based on a social understanding that aims to reduce inequality in income distribution and interregional income differences. Those who are unaware of this basis produce unfair disinformation about Erdoğan and even made up a concept called "Erdoganomics."

The circles that portray Erdoğan as a target argue that Erdoganomics is a statist, autocratic and closed economic model that tries to follow Russian and Chinese models; therefore it is cyclical and unsustainable.

As is known, a similar concept called "Abenomics" has been produced to refer to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic policies. This is because, for the first time since World War II, Japan has decided to use its strong accumulation of capital and technology independently from the Anglo-Saxon hegemony with Shinzo Abe. Under the rule of Abe, Japan decided to pursue an economy whose primary objective is not to finance the United States as before. The concept of Abenomics has been produced to imply that Abe digresses from the system.

Erdoganomics, which argues that Turkey is heading toward a closed and autocratic economy with Erdoğan, suggests that Erdoğan's alleged political dictatorship has an economic foundation. The starting point of this argument was in 2007 when the AK Party government, by using public funds and means, strove to create a new capital-owning class that would make strategic public investments in big cities. Thus, Erdoganomics argues that the state controls this structure by creating the infrastructure of industry through investments in the construction of hospitals, railways, transport networks, schools and giant airports. Indeed, these infrastructural investments originate from a vision of developing a competitive and outward-oriented economy that is based on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Anatolia. Oddly enough nowadays, there are complaints that this economic vision, just as former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan did, is not based on interest-based public economy, but finances public-oriented investments and has a balanced budget that brings down public borrowing requirements and interest rates.

Erdoganomics, if it really exists, differs from the monetary policies of orthodox economics. It does not consider high interest rates as a remedy for inflation and, unlike orthodox neoliberal policies, it advocates that high interest rates harm industrial enterprises and suggest that high interest rates are the basic cause of inflation. These can be achieved through an open economy, rather than an autarchic one like Erdoğan's adversaries suggest. In other words, an economy that differs from orthodox monetary policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), supports a competitive and export-oriented SME economy and is not based on interest, can also be an anti-monopolistic open economy. This, beyond any doubt, is truly a unique, competitive and fair market economy.