Green economy on the path to sustainable development: An empirical study on Turkey

The importance of environmental policies is increasing day by day as the climate crisis makes itself felt more and more. Since greenhouse gas emissions, which are shown as one of the most important causes of the climate crisis, are largely caused by economic production processes, the concept of green economy has been put forward as a response to this. This concept, which expresses production and consumption without polluting the environment, is implemented by many countries in the world under the name of green economy policies. The aim of the study is to examine the impact of green economy policies implemented in Turkey on the environment. For this purpose, Turkey's five green economy policies were discussed and its success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions was tested for the long term with the ARDL Boundary Test approach. In the study using annual data of 1994-2019, it is seen that environmental taxes and renewable energy supply policies are successful in reducing greenhouse gas emissions; It has been concluded that treatment municipal wastes, environmental technological developments and forest area policies have failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, it has been observed that the Error Correction Model works and the deviations from the short-term equilibrium will converge to the long-term equilibrium quickly. In the conclusion and recommendations section, suggestions were developed for each policy and it was concluded that Turkey should use green economy policies more effectively and diversify its policies in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.