Turkey

Economy:
GDP (purchasing power parity): $863.3 billion
GDP – per capita (PPP): $11,200
Population: 77,804,122

Language: Turkish
Turkish (official), Kurdish, other minority languages

Internet Penetration
8.89 million domain names registered
24.483 million users online

Paid Search Engines in Turkey:
Google (64.9% market share)
Yahoo (18.8% market share)
Microsoft (9.4 % market share)
Ask (3.9% market share)
AOL (3.0% market share)

About Turkey:
Turkey evolved from the once powerful Ottoman Empire, with territories in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Modern Turkey was founded by former Turkish army officer Mustafa Kemal in 1923 from what remained of a defeated empire.

The country labored under Kemal’s authoritarian rule as President, but recognized his role in installing far-ranging economic, social and political reforms designed to make the former Ottoman Empire into a modern, secular nation state.
Turkey languished under several military coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980, but would invariably return to civilian rule. From 1923 to 1983, the government imposed restrictions over private sector participation. This policy was replaced through a series of reforms initiated by Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, who introduced more private sector involvement based on a free market model.

Ozal’s reforms sparked rapid growth, but were not enough to stop large public sector deficits and widespread corruption that resulted in high inflation and a weak banking sector.

After the economic crisis of 2001, the reforms initiated by the government resulted in single-digit inflation, a drop in unemployment rate, more investor confidence, and increased foreign investments. These reforms included more reduction of government controls over foreign trade and investment, privatization of publicly owned industries, and liberalization of many sectors to private and foreign participation.

These institutional changes translated to an average GDP growth rate of 7.4% from 2002 to 2007, making Turkey one of the fastest growing economies of the world during the period. This uptrend slowed down to 4.5% in 2008 and early 2009, as an aftermath of the global financial crisis that emanated from the United States. However, these figures are relatively more robust than most other countries adversely affected by the global financial downturn.

Tourism is one of the major sectors that contributed to the rapid growth of the Turkish economy. In 2008, around 31 million tourists visited the country, contributing $21.9 billion to Turkish coffers. Turkey’s other key engines of economic growth are agriculture, banking, construction, electronics, textiles, oil refining, petrochemical products, mining, iron and steel.
Turkey also has a thriving automotive industry, which produced 1.1 million motor vehicles in 2008 and a flourishing shipbuilding industry, considered the 4th largest in the world, after China, South Korea, and Japan.

In 2009, Turkey renamed its currency to New Turkish Lira to introduce new banknotes and coins and to highlight its economic reforms, which have resulted in more employment opportunities and a drop in inflation rate to a single digit figure.