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"Turkey has just successfully evacuated over 17,500 of its nationals from Libya. It accomplished this very efficiently and speedily, but the numbers that needed to be evacuated indicate the strong economic ties that Turkey has with unstable countries. Since the present government came to power in 2002 it has concentrated on increasing exports to these countries with trade having increased by 177% over the last five years.
Over 200 Turkish construction firms were working in Libya when the protests began on projects that are worth $15 billion. The hope is that construction will continue once the situation has come down, but the companies signed their agreements with Gaddafi's regime, and the now unprotected building sites have been looted by protesters.
Turkey is already trying very hard to combat its trade deficit, and the instability in other countries definitely will not help. One of the reasons why Turkey chose to diversify was due to the economic slowdown EU countries which forced them to look for trade elsewhere. The EU still accounts for half of Turkey's total trade, and the hope has to be that the recovering EU economies will increase their trade with Turkey.
There is no getting away from the fact that Turkey has a large trade deficit, but the head of emerging markets research at the Royal Bank of Scotland in London, Timothy Ash, has stated that he doesn't see any funding problems in the foreseeable future. Structural reforms are needed as Turkey is trying to compete against low-cost imports from the Far East, and the government has already introduced fiscal measures to help.
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