The Turkish Economy Introduced
The Turkish economy has been through a number of changes over the years and is going through yet another one right now. For most of the country's history it has had a state controlled economy in which many of businesses were run by the government and the ones that weren't still had to deal with a great deal of government control. Then there was a change in policy and the country started to encourage free enterprise. This was going well until the country got hurt badly by a recession in the nineties. This resulted in the government taking over more of the economy again. The country is currently trying to join the European Union and in order to do this they need to return most of the state run industries to private companies. This is what they are attempting to do now.
Throughout most of its history Turkey has relied heavily on its agricultural sector and largely it still does. However there has been a great deal of effort in recent years to diversify the economy. Like most countries that are trying to go from being third world nations to being developed nations there is a strange mixture of industry. A lot of developing nations decide that the way to grow the economy is to dive into the high tech sector and this is what Turkey has done. There is a thriving high tech sector in the economy and at the same time there are many people still farming in the traditional manner.
There has also been an attempt by Turkey to increase the size of its financial services sector. The country is located in one of the most strategically important locations in the world, right where Europe and Asia meet. This means that potentially they could be the bridge between the two. They are considered to be part of both the Middle East and Europe. This presents great opportunity for the country. So far they haven't taken advantage of it in the way that they should have but they are working on it. The problem that they face is that the way business is done in Europe and the way it is done in the Middle East are so different that they haven't really decided which way they are going to go.
There are some issues facing Turkey as they attempt to grow their economy. One of the biggest is a lack of infrastructure. It is hard to do business in Turkey because they don't have the infrastructure in place that other developed countries have. They are working on it but it is going to take time. The other issue that they are facing is the lack of a skilled work force. Again they are working on it but they still lag well behind the rest of Europe when it comes to education. This has resulted in a fairly high level of unemployment in Turkey.