Turkey

To gain some understanding of the special place that gold holds in the hearts of Turks, one need only visit one of Istanbul’s most famous sites, the Grand Bazaar. Sellers come to cash in their gold jewellery, and buyers leave with anything from gold gram wafers to chunky 100-gram bars that cost more than $5000 a piece. The rest of the bazaar...

It was once thought inevitable that Western multinational banking groups would come to dominate the banking sector in Turkey, as they have in many peer emerging European countries. But five years after the global financial crisis, those groups’ demands for larger acquisitions have hardly recovered, and Turkey’s banking sector is moving on....

With an impressive record of rapid and resilient economic expansion, Turkey looks to the future with confidence in uncertain times. Since 2001 real growth has averaged more than 5% a year, an extraordinary rate for a middle-income country that imports most of its raw materials. A young and mobile population provides a natural tailwind to growth, while a high level of...

Looking forward to the 100th anniversary in 2023 of the founding of the Republic of Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government have set a number of goals for the country, some of them highly ambitious. These targets are to some extent an effort by Erdoğan to promote his bid to become president with executive powers, but they...

The banking sector looked to be starting a maturing process in 2013 as it continued to record solid growth without overheating. Amid abundant global liquidity, a moderate revival of global growth and improving domestic confidence, lending grew at an annualised rate of 16% in the first two months of 2013, roughly matching the pace of growth in...