Turkey has experienced a sea change since 1980 when it turned to an export orientation in the economy after exhausting the accumulation possibilities under import substitution. In the new period, the Turkish textile and clothing industry. which has quickly taken advantage of export activities, took on a global dimension, and has been the prime engine of the country's industrialisation efforts, bringing new opportunities to the towns engaged in it. This thesis is an attempt to account for the development of textile and clothing industry in Turkey, with particular emphasis on the transformation in the local economies of two towns, Bursa and Denizli, both specialised in this industry. The thesis is constructed to examine the relations and conflicts between the state, the industry and labour as well as between producers in the different segments of textile and clothing on the one hand, the new geographical map of economic development in terms of the industry' concerned on the other. In the analysis of the local dynamics, the two towns appear at the different points. Bursa is one of the few towns in Turkey which made its appearance, as a strong textile town under the tutelage of several large firms for the national market before 1980 and has enjoyed further development thanks to export activities, by restructuring its industry to fit the new conditions; while Denizli, an underachiever in the previous period, has now undergone an unprecedented development initiated by its small and medium-sized textile and clothing firms, quick on the uptake of the potentialities in the new period. This difference between the two towns enables us to have a rich comparison to scrutinise the socio-spatial process. In such an inquiry into the shared and unshared experiences of these towns in this process, this thesis is also an exercise to sensitise our understanding of industrial districts and network relationships in localities with a new set of empirical evidence from a developing country.