ABSTRACT
The Turkish economy has achieved a respectable, but not extraordinary, growth performance in the last half century. Although the average growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) was high during the “import substitution industrialization” drive of the 1960s and 1970s, that period ended in 1980 as a result of a serious balance of payment crisis. International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank-sponsored outward-oriented policies were adopted in the early 1980s under military rule. The economy achieved high growth rates in the early 1980s, but became trapped in a cycle of boom and bust in the 1990s, and contracted sharply in 1994, 1999, and 2001. The 2001 crisis was the most severe the economy had experienced since the establishment of the Republic in 1923.
