ABSTRACT

Over the last two decades, technology has played a key role in explaining the overall economic performance of countries. Particularly, high-tech sectors are accepted as one of the most dynamic components of the performance of new emerging countries. In this context, the relationship between technological change, improvement and growth was examined by a number of empirical studies for many developed and developing countries. These studies revealed a strong correlation between their findings. However, none of them considered the relationship from the perspective of sustainable development, which may be defined as a good compromise between economics, society and environment. Since manufacturing faces the challenges of satisfying societal needs, regarding environmental issues, the environmental side-effects of technology and their solutions through technological improvement, which seems to be a contrary to each other, are crucial to assess sustainability.

This study deals with the above relationship by assessing the effects of high-tech industries on Turkey's manufacturing from the perspective of sustainable development. The study is structured as follows: after the introduction, section two offers a brief overview of the empirical literature on technology and growth and its shortcomings from the perspective of sustainable development. In this section, the role of high-tech industries in sustainable development is also discussed. Then the third section gives a brief overview of environmentally sound technologies related to Turkey's high-tech sectors. The fourth section presents the high-tech profile of Turkey's manufacturing industry, particularly from the perspective of environmental conditions. The last section gives a summary.