The position of Turkey in international production chain and effects on labour force employment

International production chain, in this thesis, is defined as a series of sequential, productive activities geographically fragmented for final goods production, based on the new international division of labour. The expansion of international production and the participation of less developed countries in industrial production was presented as a solution to overcome the crisis of capitalism in the 1970s. The international new division of labour considers the main reason for the internationalization of production as the reduction of labour costs to reduce the cost of production in sectors where profit rates are falling. In this thesis, the effects of Turkey's participation in international production by adopting export-oriented industrialization policy on labour force employment, were investigated on the basis of production chains. For this purpose, eight sectors are determined to create their international production chains, by analyzing Turkey's production and foreign trade structure with input-output tables. Production chains of these sectors created under the headings of apparel, automotive, food, construction, electric-electronics, paper, furniture and logistics. The sectors in which Turkey is positioned within international production chains are determined by establishing tables for Turkey in each production chain. In these tables, the stage of the sector in the production chain, whether the sector is export-oriented, sector's import penetration rate, the value added and employment share of the sector in the production chain, professional distribution and competitiveness indices are included. For the labour force employment effects of Turkey's position within international production chains, labour force employment in Turkey and EU investigated with these variables: the volume of employment, working hours, total value added, value added per employee, hourly wages and the share of wages in production value. According to the findings of the study Turkey specializes in the international production chains of the apparel, automotive, food and logistics, in accordance with the new international division of labour. Among the sectors that Turkey is specialized within international production chains, it has lower labour costs than export partners and higher labour costs than import partners. This finding shows that Turkey takes place in the international division of labour by offering low labour costs. Keywords: international producrtion chain, labourforce employment