Evaluating the performance of Türkiye and European Union countries in the context of sustainable development with CRITIC-based GIA method

Humanity has been meeting its basic needs using natural resources since its existence. However, the increase in production and consumption patterns that changed with the Industrial Revolution led to an increase in environmental problems. With the recognition of the deterioration of the ecological balance at the end of the 1960s, the focus on the environment and the search for solutions in this direction began. In 1972, the United Nations Stockholm Conference laid the foundations of sustainable development, and the first use of the term was realized with the "Brundtland Report" published in 1987, and its official definition was included in the literature. Following this process, countries have taken many steps and made progress on environmental issues until today. In this context, in this study, Turkey and the European Union (EU) countries were analyzed and their performances were evaluated by taking the averages of the available data for the period 2012-2022; twenty criteria selected in the context of sustainable development were divided into five economic, seven social and eight environmental dimensions in separate categories and then analyzed together. The performances of 22 EU countries and Turkey in the context of sustainable development were assessed by excluding the countries with missing criteria from the scope of the study. For this purpose, the criteria data were obtained from the OECD, EUROSTAT, and Sustainable Development Report and subjected to CRITIC and GIA methods, which are multi-criteria decision making techniques. First, the importance weights of the criteria were determined by the CRITIC method, which is an objective criteria weighting method. Then, in the case of the simultaneous existence of many criteria and alternatives, the GIA method was applied to solve decision problems and rank countries' performance. Twenty criteria at the same time, Hungary, Sweden, Portugal, Czechia, and Latvia are the top five countries with the most effective policies and closer performance toward sustainable development goals in economic, social, and environmental terms. On the other hand, according to the findings, the five countries with the lowest performance towards sustainable development goals are Greece, the Netherlands, Estonia, Turkey, and Ireland. These countries are among those that need further to improve their policies in the context of sustainable development.