EFFECTS OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS IN EMERGING ECONOMIES: THE CASE OF TURKEY

Abstract

Since 1980s, when globalization has accelerated significantly, financial crises have occurred much more frequently. As a result of financial deepening across markets and as markets become more dependent on each other, regional or sectoral crises tend to spread further. In 2008, financial crisis that commenced in American Housing Market, spread quickly first to the entire U.S. economy, then went global and infected the global financial system. Although the crisis originated in the U.S, the world’s largest economy, it had profound impacts on developing countries. Since Turkey’s financial system is not as deep as United States’ and due to the reforms adopted in 2001, Turkey experienced the global crisis in a different way. Unlike it was stated by the authorities, which made economic policies in that period, Turkey did not see least damage from the crisis, in fact was hit hard by it. While presence of strong control mechanisms in the Turkish financial sector causes the crisis to be felt less in this sector, the shrinkage in the world trade volüme influenced especially manufacturing and export sectors negatively. In this context, the effects of the financial crisis and to Turkey in the study were examined.