Turkey became an industrial giant in the Middle East thanks to the Turkish industrial revolution in the early 1980s, led by President Turgut Özal.
At the time, the share of manufacturing industry exports was less than 10 percent. Now it has reached 80 percent, with more than half of this share going to Europe. G-7 countries receive 60 percent of these exports.
Turkey's industrial position was strengthened after the country entered a customs union arrangement with the European Union (EU) on industrial products.
Eastward trajectory
In the early 1980s, industrial sites were located around the metropoles: İstanbul, İzmir, and Adana. Then they moved eastward, and a group of secondary cities emerged: Kayseri, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş and Denizli. This allowed the skills base for industrial production to spread from the first to the second tier.
The export of manufacturing products reflects the Turkish economy's high competitiveness compared with the potential of regional countries, like Russia up north, where manufacturing industries comprise only 30 percent of total exports and the Gulf down south.
