Turkey's free trade agreements, South Korea model and foreign trade effects

Turkey has been in contact active trade relation with many countries from beginning of applying export oriented industrialization. Turkey has involved in economic integration in order to increase the benefits of foreign trade and optimize the country's trade in goods. Free trade agreements, one of the most independents form of the economic integration, play important role of the future dynamics and today`s Turkey economy. Countries sign free trade agreements in order to make international trade most efficient, increase domestic market competition, reduce costs, reach new markets and ensure resource efficiency. In the past, counties provided the integration to minimize transport costs with closest countries. However, with the changing balances of today, free trade agreements are signed with a country in the far end of the world. It has been observed that productive results have been obtained compared to the countries whose geographical location is close. The most obvious example, which is to be examined in this study is Turkey-South Korea free trade agreement. This study is concerned with free trade agreement that has entered into force between Turkey and South Korea as a consequences of accelerated number of free trade agreements after Turkey's entry to custom union with European Union. In this context, the concept of 'free trade' will be explained, the development and results of free trade agreements of Turkey would be analyzed. In the third part of the study, RCA (Revealed Comparative Advantages), RXA (Relative Export Advantage) and intra-industry trade data will be evaluated in order to analyze the effects of Free trade agreement between two countries.