Turkey is situated at the junction of Europe and Asia. The European part of the country is called Thrace (Trakya) and the Asian part is named Anatolia (Anadolu).

The location on two continents has been a central feature of the Turkish history, culture and politics. The country shares borders with Greece and Bulgaria to the northwest, with Georgia and Armenia, and Iran to the east, Iraq and Syria to the south. The Black Sea to the north, the Aegean Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south are connected by the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles, a water way known as the Turkish Straits.

Turkey has marked a remarkable rate of growth after 1980’s. This has been attributed to three factors, namely a shift from agriculture towards industry and service activities, the modernization of

the existing industry and technology transfer, and the effect of international trade and competition.

Significant improvements in such a short period of time have registered Turkey on the world economic scale as an exceptional emerging economy.

• Institutionalized economy fueled by USD 180 billion of FDI in the past decade
• 17th largest economy in the world and 6th largest economy compared with EU countries in 2017 (GDP at PPP, IMF-WEO)
• Robust economic growth with an average annual real GDP growth of 5.6 percent during 2003-2016
• GDP reached USD 849,48 billion in 2017, up from USD 236 billion in 2002
• Sound economic policies with a prudent fiscal discipline
• Strong financial structure resilient to the global financial crisis

The liberalization of capital movements and the willingness of foreign creditors to lend to Turkish investors contributed to the high growth rate of private investment.

• http://www.invest.gov.tr

Turkey has been restructuring its economy since 1980 along the lines of a more liberal economic policy. In this context, more emphasis is being placed on private sector especially in productive sectors of economy and the role of State is limited to infrastructure development and the provision of public services.

The economic policy aims to diminish unemployment, to realize technology transfers, to privatize State Economic Enterprises, to overcome the deficit in the balance of payments and especially to increase the integration of the economy with the world economy and to attract more foreign capital to the Country. Turkey also uses the option of fiscal incentives to channelize domestic and foreign investments for industrial development and rural-urban integration.

These incentives or tax expenditures are usually available to investors for the promotion of private investment activities in selected sectors/regions depending on the scale of investment and in the following forms:

The Turkish Government introduced two incentive packages in 2016 (“centre of attraction” and “super incentives” which provide comprehensive support to the qualified investments.

The “centre of attraction” programme aims to balance the development level within the regions through increase in employment, production and exports whereas “super incentives” aim to meet any critically important current or future requirements of Turkey, develop technologic capacity in the fields that technologically Turkey fall behind, reduce dependency on imports/foreign sources, improve Turkey’s competitive power and support R&D focused investments.

The investment incentive regime as a general aims to further accelerate inbound investments over the course of the next few years and contribute to the employment with the new incentive programmes.