Review of International Production and Global Value Chain Studies: the Case of Turkish Regional Networks

This study focuses on how Turkey’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can participate in global markets. In fact, developing countries provide a means for accelerating the development of enterprises and countries, providing openings that developing country enterprises can exploit to upgrade their capabilities. For such enterprises, or local clusters of enterprises, the task is to insert themselves into the wider networks. This may be regarded as the main achievement for sustaining competitiveness, in similarities with the re-structuring of regional networks in developing countries that often compete by participating in extensive inter-firm networks. As another dimension in our study, we will investigate and argue whether if it is possible to increase and improve the participation of Turkish’s SMEs in the global economy, which is explicitly the baseline hypothesis of this study. The literature on regional networks and global value chain (GVC) will provide us some new insights to show the international linkages of Turkish SMEs, which often lack the capabilities to participate effectively in global markets.