Turkish investments abroad, with a special focus on Central and Eastern Europe

With the growing global integration of the Turkish economy, the country has emerged as a capital investor abroad, and it has become one of the leading investors in its neighbouring regions. Beside the growing vitality of the Turkish corporate sector as a driving factor, the changing Turkish foreign policy has also promoted the active presence of Turkish companies in neighbouring countries, as part of its new strategy aiming at strengthening the central position of Turkey in the region. By looking for the motivations of TMNEs, we found different reasons depending also on the type of firms and the sectors they are active in. A continously increasing motivation of TMNEs for outward investment was the brandbuilding and the upgrading of their technologies, to be able to compete on more developed markets as well. We has also examined the special characteristics of Turkish OFDI in the Central and Eastern European countries. On the one hand, we could find here several of the above mentioned specificities of TMNEs motivations. They invest in these countries to enter new markets, in many cases they use other, mainly Dutch firms as the direct investor company. It was also common that they aimed by the investment to manage their brands more effectively and to improve EU costumers’ perceptions and attitudes towards their products. Central and Eastern Europe as a region closely connected to the core European markets which shares several institutional weaknesses of the Turkish domestic market may have a much higher importance for TMNEs investent in the future.