Türkiye'nin Komşu ve Çevre Ülkelerle Dış Ticaret Stratejisinin Bölgesel Stratejiler İçindeki Performansı[The Performance of Turkey's Foreign Trade Strategy of Neighbouring and Surrounding Countries within the Regional Strategies]

Turkey has started to implement the export-oriented foreign trade strategy in place of foreign trade importsubstitution strategy with the decisions of January 24, 1980. The 1980s, that began to implement the export-oriented foreign trade strategy,was a period in which economic and trade relations with especially neighboring and surrounding countries increased rapidly. In contrast, in 1990s negative developments occurred in foreign trade volume due to a number of negatives such as the events in the Middle East and the EU market to come to a certain saturation point after incorporation into the Customs Union. In 2000s, Turkey developed new strategies and policies to overcome the negative developments of 1990s in foreign trade. Providing an increase in foreign trade volume and market diversification efforts have been attempted with the new strategies and policies. Turkey began to experience an increase in both the number of reached export markets and the volume of exports with the implemented new foreign trade strategy and policy in which was regionally weighted. One of the implemented new strategies and policies in which regional weighted is the strategy of the "Development of Trade with Neighboring and Surrounding Countries". In this study, the performance of foreign trade of the neighboring and surrounding countries was compared with the countries covered by the other regional trade strategies. During the period of strategy implementation of the neighboring and surrounding countries between the years of 2003-2013, Turkey's exports and imports with the neighboring and surrounding countries showed better performance both proportionally and statistically in comparison with the total exports and imports except for the neighboring and surrounding countries’ exports and imports. However, the neighboring and surrounding countries covered by the neighboring and surrounding countries strategy were not found to be better in comparison with the countries covered by other regional strategies in terms of exports and imports.