Turkey is emerging strong once again recording a GDP growth of more than 7 percent in 2017. The country is calm and its business as usual with the economy remaining resilient and expected to maintain the momentum in 2018 as well.
The Republic of Turkey straddles Eastern Europe and Western Asia and has cultural connections to ancient Greek, Persian, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires.
The alluring historic Istanbul City is Turkey’s economic, cultural and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosporus strait, which separates Europe and Asia between the Sea Marmara and the black Sea .The city’s commercial and historical center lies on the European side. Ankara is the capital of Turkey.
Turkey consists of an emerging market and is among the world’s newly industrialized countries. With over 25 million foreign tourists visiting Turkey in 2016, Turkey is currently the 17th largest economy in the world and the sixth largest in Europe. Turkey’s income from the tourism sector is expected to reach $ 30 billion in 2018 and stands among the world’s leading producers of agricultural products, textiles, motor vehicles, ships and other transportation equipment; construction materials; consumer electronics and home appliances
Meanwhile trade between Sri Lanka and Turkey has picked up over the past years. Turkey is the 16th export destination for Sri Lanka and accounted for 1.5% of total exports from Sri Lanka in 2016. Total export value from Sri Lanka to Turkey stood as US$ 154 million in 2016 and total imports from Turkey to Sri Lanka for the same period was US$ 69 million.
Sri Lanka’s main export products to Turkey in 2016 were tea (value added and bulk), woven fabrics, apparel, pneumatic tyres, activated carbon, coco peat and fiber pith, desiccated coconut, industrial and surgical gloves of rubber and essential oil. The main import products from Turkey were electric machinery, animal fat, leather, processed food, woven fabric, cotton during the same year.
Sri Lanka has entered into an agreement with Turkey on Economic and Technical Cooperation which was signed in 2002 in order to strengthen the bilateral ties in the fields of economic and technical cooperation. Meanwhile Turkey has sharply increased imports of Sri Lankan tea in 2017 for blending and re-exports, emerging as the top buyer of the island’s main export crop.
Exports of Ceylon tea to Turkey rose almost 40% to 35.4 million kilos in 2017 from the previous year.
Turkish Airlines, the flag carrier airline of Turkey flies daily to Colombo and is the only 4 Star airlines in all categories in Europe which has been ranked the “Best Airline in Europe” for six consecutive years in a row. The Company has also transformed into one of the largest global network carriers in the world. With the world’s 4th largest flight network, Turkish Airlines flies to 253 international destinations in 129 countries and has the fourth largest network in the world with 302 destinations. Meanwhile, the total number of passengers carried by Turkish Airlines rose by 28.5 percent in the first quarter of 2018 compared with the same period last year.
The airline is reported to have carried 16.7 million passengers in the first three months of 2018, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
The number of passengers carried in domestic and international flights surged 31.3 percent and 26.2 percent respectively. Over the same period, the airline’s passenger load factor or seat occupancy reached the highest level in its history for the first quarter, up 6.5 percentage points to 80.5 percent.
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