Turkey

The Marmaray tunnel, a rail link beneath the sea connecting Istanbul’s European and Asian districts, was a panacea for beleaguered commuters when it opened in October 2013. Plans to connect the two shores via an underwater tunnel date back to at least 1891 during the glory days of Ottoman rail, when a French engineer proposed to Sultan Abdülhamit II to build an...

Substantial winter and spring rainfalls, coupled with heavy snow in many regions, broke the drought that blighted Turkey’s agriculture sector in 2013-14, with farmers looking forward to improved yields and higher earnings, rebounding from a lean year that saw one of the region’s leading agricultural producers having to import grain and other foodstuffs.

Few treats are as simple and pleasing to the palette as a fresh tomato from a Turkish summer market. But in 2010, worries about pesticide contamination brought strict curbs on exports to the EU, hitting local tomato farmers, among the world’s top five producers of the Mediterranean staple. However, the EU has now abolished the more stringent inspection requirements on...

Directly responsible for a significant share of GDP and with its contractors active right across the globe, Turkey’s construction sector has been at the forefront of the country’s recent economic development. Over the last decade, the sector has transformed the skyline of Istanbul and other cities, renewed and extended Turkey’s transport infrastructure, and built new...