Export potentials of SMEs in Turkey

The SMEs constitutes 99.8% of all enterprises in Turkey, enclosing 76.7% ofemployment and they perform 10% of total export of the country. It can easily beassumed that this is a low rate. Looking at the share of total exportation of the SMEsin other countries, the SMEs in the U.S.A perform a share of 32%, in Germany theyhave a share of 31%, in Japan 38%, in England 22% and in France 26%. It isconsidered that raising the share of SMEs? in total exportation into the level ofdeveloped countries will give way to a decrease in unemployment rate in our country.The aim of this study, is to put forward the importance of SME?s in ourcountry?s exportation and to put forward the barriers in front of SME?s exportationdetermining the measurements to be taken in order to increase the share in totalexportation of the country which adopted the model of devolopment that based onexportation.In the first part, it is investigated that how is the notion of entrepreneurship,which has a crucial importance in the coming up of the SMEs, is discussed in theliterature of economy. The studies concerning the expansion of the SMEs into theinternational markets are also evaluated.In the second part, studies that evaluate the SMEs worldwide are discussed.The third part analyses the situation of the SME?s in Turkey, the SMEdefinition and EU cohesion studies for SMEs.The fourth and the last section, using the simple regression analyse and factoranalyse methods, it is attempted to determine the necessary elements to increasethe share of SMEs in direct exportation and why the SMEs can not have bigger sharein exportation. The findings major around these two factor. The first one is`insufficient knowledge about foreign markets and deficiency of resources?, the otherone is productivity, insufficiency of competition ability and satisfaction in domesticmarkets.