The interplay of the global and the local: the socio-economic development of the towel and bathrobe cluster of Denizli

Abstract

This study scrutinizes the main socio-economic factors that facilitated the development of the towel and bathrobe sector in the western Anatolian city Denizli. The city experienced a great volume of economic development in accordance with the global trends after 1980. Since then, its efforts to adapt to the changes in the international market through export-orientation have resulted in success. In facilitating this adaptation, the city has drawn upon its local historical and social characteristics, and a certain pool of production know-how that has come to accumulated in the region for more than two thousand years. In that sense, it emerges as a successful example of a region which industrialized rapidly and strongly around its indigenous textile industry, and by specializing in a certain branch, with the help of the cluster model of economic development. To this end, the city developed its textile sector around a local capital aiming at industrialization for export through a production motivated by buyer-driven networks. The city achieved this success through an effective strategy by clustering, in addition to adopting strong measures of local competitiveness in the global economy. This analysis of the cultural and socio-economic factors of Denizli from a political economy perspective helps to achieve several objectives with respect to the social science literature: first of all, it conducts an investigation into the contemporary political economy of Turkey. Second, it clarifies some of the manifestations of the intersections between local and global economic processes in the context of modern global capitalism.