Impact of Coronovirus (COVID-19) on free zones: The case of Antalya

Free zones are the backbone of Turkey's and the world's foreign trade with the advantages and incentives they have. Especially the free zones, which have many contributions to production and exports, have taken their share from the Covid-19 pandemic that broke out in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The new customs controls implemented in this period and the difficulties experienced in the supply of raw materials adversely affected the free zones. In this context, it is aimed to reveal the experiences and difficulties faced by the free zone companies in this period by asking the expert managers of the companies operating in the free zones, the questions prepared as a result of the search of international literature and news sources by using in-depth interview technique in the study. As a result of the researches made for this purpose, in-depth interview questions focusing on issues such as problems experienced at customs, problems encountered during raw material supply, price changes were prepared and asked to company managers. The data collected after the interviews were evaluated, and the problems experienced by the free zones during the pandemic period were tried to be understood with the findings obtained. Evaluating the findings obtained as a result of the in-depth interviews, it was seen that the free zones faced many problems in this period. Although the free zone companies producing yachts experienced an increase in production due to the increasing demands of people and companies to be isolated in this period, they experienced problems in the supply of raw materials. Therefore, this situation caused delays in production. In the same way, the measures taken by the companies that had many problems in terms of logistics, workforce and suppliers in this period were tried to be revealed. With this occasion, it is aimed to fill the gaps in the literature and to show the policy makers the main problems of free zones.