turkish economy

Turkey is facing its first recession since 2009: economic growth contracted in the last two quarter of 2018 by -1.6% and -2.4%, respectively. As a result, Turkey’s economy only grew 2.6 % in all of 2018, compared to 7.4% in 2017 and an average of 6.8% in the period between 2010 and 2017. According to the latest OECD estimates, this year Turkey’s GDP will decrease by 1.8%.

The economy has become one of the hotly debated topics in Turkey prior to the general elections on June 7. There is now a quasi-consensus that the upcoming election is one of the crucial turning points in the history of contemporary Turkish politics. The Justice and Development Party (AKP in the Turkish acronym), which has been ruling the country with single-party majority governments for about 13 years, aims to gain enough seats again to replace the current parliamentary system with a presidential one.