Strong economy transition program of Turkeyeconomic effects: Success and failures

After trying to deal with economic problems during the 1990s, Turkey suffered one of the most severe crises in 2001 throughout history. As all the crises, the 2001 depression did not occure at once; it is the accumulation of problems experienced in previous periods. As a recipe, the Transition to Strong Economy programme was implemented by the government so as to get out of this severe depression and structural regulations in macro level were foreseen and imlemented in this programme. The purpose of this study is to analyze the period between 2002 and 2008 during when the Transition to Strong Economy Program was implemented in the light of the macroeconomical indicators.For this purpose, firstly the period up to the 2001 crisis and the main problems experienced in this period are discussed. Secondly, the Transition to Strong Economy Programmeand the structural transformation are discussed. In the last part, 2002-2008 period was analyzed in the light of macroeconomic indicators. As a result, following conculusions are achieved; Transition to Strong Economy leaded not only Turkey to get rapidly out of the 2001 crisis, but also leaded Turkey's economy to grow rapidly and leaded the chronic inflation in Turkey's economy to decrease below 10%. Significant improvements have been achieved in balancing public finance. Moreover, the financial sector, which is an important cause of crises during 1990's, was structurally reformed. However,the problems such as inflation, current account balance and unemployment is still on Turkey's agenda.