Kamu Harcamaları İç Borç İlişkisi: 1980-2003

Mazlum Muammer Şentürk's Kamu Harcamaları İç Borç İlişkisi: 1980-2003 (Public Expenditures - Domestic Debt Relationship: 1980-2003) provides a comprehensive analysis of the origins of the Turkish economy's structural problems. The book focuses on the chronic public deficits and the continuously increasing public sector borrowing requirement (PSBR) that became endemic in the post-1980 period. While fiscal theory views borrowing as a reasonable tool, especially for financing productive investment expenditures that create a "useful burden" (faydalı yük) for future generations, the author questions the validity of this assumption in the Turkish context. Using time-series data spanning 1980-2003 , Şentürk employs an econometric model (Robust Regression) with domestic debt as the dependent variable and current, investment, and transfer expenditures as independent variables. The study's findings strikingly reveal that the healthy link between public spending and domestic debt has "started to break" (kopmaya başlamıştır). Borrowing has transformed from a tool for financing expenditures into a vicious cycle of "paying off debt with debt" (refinancing). The analysis statistically proves that domestic debt was not used to finance "useful" investment spending ; rather, it was channeled into current expenditures and, most significantly, transfer expenditures, which include high-interest payments. This situation demonstrates that debt servicing has "crowded out" investment spending, and that the pursuit of a "primary surplus" (faiz dışı fazla) has restricted social expenditures