Turkish footwear sector competitiveness against the European Union

Today, in the new world order caused by economic globalisation,technologic and political changes in world economy result in changes in thecompetitiveness of the countries. Everyday, countries intensify their effort togain, develop and protect their power to compete with other countries. Today,even the most developed countries are trying to strengthen their competitivenessin order to enlarge their share in the world economy. Turkey desires to increaseits competitiveness in all sectors in order to rise the welfare level of its peopleand to speed up its ecnomic growth. Turkey endeavors to increase itscompetitiveness against EU, who is one of the most important economicpartners of Turkey, in all sectors. This situation is also valid for footwear sectorwhose value added and employment capacity is high, as well as many others.Whether Turkey will be able to rise its competitiveness in the footwear sectorwhich has an important place in the production industry of both Turkey andEU, plays an crucial role in the future of the sector.The study aims to determine the competitiveness of Turkey?s footwearsector against EU in the global market for the 1994-2005 period. In the first partof this study, the concept of international competitiveness with its increasingimportance, the factors behind it and techniques developed to measure it hasbeen explained. In the second part, establishment and development of therelationship between Turkey and EU and economic relations has been examinedin the framework of Customs Union(CU). In the final section competitiveness ofTurkish footwear sector against the world and competitiveness of the footwearsector in the EU has tried to compared. The analysis is based on revealedcomparative advantage (RCA). The findings of RCA suggest that Turkishfootwear sector which reduced its competitiveness after CU, has revealedcomperative advantage vis-a-vis the EU since 2003.Key Words: 1) Footwear Sector 2) Turkey- European Union Relations3) Competitiveness 4) Revealed Comparative Advantage.