The ideology of the market economy has recently received a boost from two major privatisation schemes: the spectacular sale of British Telecom, the state owned telephone monopoly in Britain, by Mrs Thatcher's government and the sale of the Bosporous Bridge, linking Europe to Asia, by the Ozal government in Turkey.

There are obvious parallels in the two cases, signifying a world movement starting in the West and extending to many developing countries, in part due to IMF arm twisting tactics. The ideological justification in both cases has been the "democratisation" of private property ownership and extension of its benefits to the small man — in short the creation of a new "people's capitalism."

In Britain, Telecom's shares were divided into three categories. Of the total shares, valued at nearly £4bn, £3bn were offered for sale. Of this 14 per cent was allocated to overseas investors — United States, Canada and Japan — splitting the 415 million shares between them.

The second category is the large British investment institutions which were given in priority allocation two weeks in advance 47.4 per cent of the offer at 1428bn shares. Both these categories showed great eagerness to buy more shares than they were offered: as one leading spokesman put it, "we have far fewer than we want."

The government, aware of the political dimension of the scheme, had tried to restrict the extent of the sale available to large investors. The applications by about one million people to buy between 200 to 400 shares each were met in full. An additional one million investors who applied for 100,00 shares received only 800.

The trading on the London Stock Exchange after the Telecom sale, however, proved that both the institutions and large investors were unhappy with the scaling down of their initial demands by the government and would try to buy back even at significantly high prices a much larger part of the total shares. This was reflected in sharp price rises on the opening day of the trading.

Each 50p partially paid share went up to 95p on the open market — a profit of nearly 100 percent overnight. This sharp increase might have been aggravated by the fact that many small investors were unable to sell their shares immediately as confirmation of the amount offered was posted to them some days later, so creating a technical shortage of sellers and driving share prices up.

Nonetheless, the broad underlying magnitude indicates that there is some heavy trading ahead out of which the small investors would probably not come out as major shareholders although they would have made some quick money on the side. The sale of British Telecom was heavily oversubscribed and judging by the immediate share value on the open market the government has sold the corporation about £1.3bn less than its initial stock market value.

A similar response was received by the sale of the Bosporous Bridge by the Turkish government, though here the guarantees offered by the government had to be firmer to attract small investors. The shares give holders the right to income from the bridge tolls, estimated at £23.2m, and certificates of sale equivalent in value to this total were issued. The first batch of certificates representing 34 per cent of the bridge's revenues (about 12bn Turkish lira) has already been issued and a second batch of 15m lira is soon to follow. The certificates were sold through the 900 branches of the nation's largest private bank, Is-Bank. And, like the Telecom sale, the scheme was completely sold out on its first day and the response was apparently as enthusiastic in .middle class areas as in low-income districts. In part the popularity of the scheme was due to state guarantees, including a fixed rate of return on the investment, the income being tax-free. In addition, shares can be soid back to the bank or other individuals at any time. There was also an upper limit to buying of shares of about 5m lira.

The opposition in both countries has objected to the schemes. In Turkey the populist centre-right party has applied to the constitutional court for the annulment of the government decision. In Britain the opposition Labour Party has forcefully brought out into the open the bizarre logic of the whole plan, pointing out the huge loss to taxpayers (about 1 p off income tax with a loss of £1.3bn).

What about those who did not participate in purchasing of the Telecom shares? They have lost a substantial transfer of wealth to those who did, both at home and overseas, the letter's profit estimated at £180m.

But there is one respect in which the British and Turkish cases differ. While in Britain final equilibrium will probably squeeze out a large section of the small investors this is not necessarily the case in Turkey. Indeed some argue that one of the major aims of Ozal's privatisation programmers to attract the large pull of scattered holdings by ordinary Muslim Turks who refused to invest their capital in interest bearing activities and largely drawn out of circulation.

Shares in the Bosporous Bridge have apparently been an acceptable investment alternative and reports indicate that such investors were large in number buying the certificates. It is ironic that while many Turkish opposition parties, including the Islamic Refah party, have fiercely opposed the IMF-inspired privatisation programme, many ordinary Turks should participate in its implementation.