{"id":3029,"date":"2016-08-29T15:08:17","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T14:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/?p=3029"},"modified":"2016-11-21T08:54:18","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T07:54:18","slug":"doing-business-in-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/2016\/08\/29\/doing-business-in-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing Business in Turkey?"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the World Bank<\/a>, the Turkish economy grew quickly from 2002 to 2012<\/strong> and although its growth has since stalled a bit, it is currently the world’s 16th largest economy<\/strong> with per capita income of $10,500. The bank also insists that the rise in economic prosperity was largely shared by Turkey’s poor with poverty rates falling and over 6 million new jobs created.<\/p>\n

According to Al-Monitor.com<\/a>, Turkey attracted $130 billion in foreign investment from 2007 to 2015<\/strong> and Turkey has been chosen as the regional hub for a number of multinational companies<\/strong> including both Coke and Pepsi, Microsoft, Intel and others. Turkey has\u00a0also\u00a0been discussed as a\u00a0\u00a0growth market\u00a0in a number of industries<\/strong> including\u00a0cars and light trucks with Toyota, Renault, Fiat Chrysler, \u00a0Ford, and Hyundai\u00a0all have plants or joint ventures in Turkey.<\/p>\n

Too Good to be True<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"Screen<\/a>
World Bank 2014 Rankings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turkey had offered investors a growing\u00a0economy in a central location with a stable, pro-western government which might even eventually become part of the European Union. How easy to fly into Istanbul and stay in one of the 280 four and five star hotels, do business with educated, English and German speaking Turks and get things done.<\/p>\n

In 2014, The World Bank rated Turkey 41 in its ease of doing business rankings just behind Israel and not far from Italy and Belgium.<\/p>\n

In this story\u00a0line, Recep Erdo\u011fan and his Justice and Development Party represented a moderate, tolerant form of political Islam which offered a positive example to the rest of the Muslim world.<\/p>\n

Rough 2016<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"Screen<\/a>After the collapse of the peace talks with Kurdish separatists\u00a0in 2015 Turkey has increasingly become riskier<\/strong>. Over 100 people were killed when two bombs exploded at a peace rally near the Ankara Railway station in October 2015 and as the BBC<\/a> reported, there have been a number of deadly attacks across the country since then.<\/p>\n

On July 15th sectors of the military attempted to take over the government<\/strong> and ordinary Turks came out in the hundreds of thousands to defend their President and his government. In the aftermath, however, Erdogan<\/strong> has gone on to arrest and dismiss tens of thousands of soldiers, police, public officials and teachers in what can only be called a political purge of all opposition<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The enemy of my enemy…<\/strong><\/h3>\n

While the purge has caused concern in Western capitals, the geo-political reality is that the United States and its allies needs Turkey, a\u00a0NATO member, to win the fight against ISIS and to help end, or at least control, the civil war in Syria<\/strong>. Turkey and Russia have also come close to a total breakdown of relations as a result of their backing different sides in that conflict and Turkey actually shot down a Russian plane in November last year which reportedly strayed into Turkish airspace.<\/p>\n

In a move reminiscent of Henry Kissenger’s practice of realpolitik back in the 1970s, the U.S. Vice President, Joe Biden, was sent to Turkey last week to re-assure Erdogan of U.S. support in exchange for apparent promises\u00a0on the future of the Incirlik air force base, which is central to the war effort, and Turkey’s increased support. It seems part of the deal was also to limit Kurdish ground forces to the East\u00a0of the Euphrates river and also to support Turkish attempts to extradite Fethullah G\u00fclen<\/a>, the leader of a political movement called Hizmet that Turkey said was behind the coup attempt.\u00a0G\u00fclen is a rival of Erdogan and lives in exile in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Whatever was said between Biden and Erdogan, Turkish ground forces subsequently entered Syria in coordination with U.S<\/strong>. airstrikes<\/strong> and helped rebel forces liberate\u00a0Jarabulus, a town West of the river, from ISIS.<\/p>\n

Inevitable Surprises<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"imgres\"<\/a>Peter Shwartz is one of the leading writers on the benefits of Scenario Planning<\/strong> and used the term as the title of one of his books on the subject. The basic idea is that some things are somewhat predictable<\/strong> such as a military coup in Turkey and its eventual involvement in the Syrian civil war.<\/p>\n

Serious study of Turkish history and the structure of its civil society would reveal that events such as those in 2016 were bound to happen sooner or later. My hope is that those companies that have invested in the country and use it as a hub have sufficient systems and people in place to provide security and to be resilient in the face of the current situation.<\/p>\n

<\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although for the last 10 years, Turkey was increasingly seen as a prime target for multinational investment, the internal and external political situation has grown tremendously complex calling company strategy into question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":788,"featured_media":3039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26749,778],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-global-strategy","megacategoria-mc-strategy"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3029"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3050,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3029\/revisions\/3050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}