Turkey: Between Iraq & a Hard Place

The Crossroads Turkey, the latest in our Crossroads video series, has in many ways been our most challenging episode yet, with Turkey taking unexpected plot twists seemingly on a daily basis. For example, just days prior to my trip to the country, factions of the military staged what would ultimately be a failed coup attempt. This delayed filming by a few months as we let the dust settle.

That said, this episode has been very exciting to prepare, as the topical nature of the subject helped underscore the value of the Crossroads series – to highlight critical examples of the broad and long-term issues we cover as part of the Global Economic Dynamics Project; to show why these issues matter right now, on the ground.

This bonus video from The Crossroads Turkey is a case in point. One theme that our team has taken particular interest in is how mass migration effects economies. In this excerpt, we zero in on the impact of the refugee crisis in Turkey. Many Iraqi and Syrian refugees hoped to pass through Turkey en route to Europe. But deals between the European Union and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have essentially closed this crossing route, and hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of refugees are stuck in Turkey.

Meanwhile, security spillovers from Iraqi and Syrian civil wars have decimated the Turkish tourism industry.  Even before the July coup attempt, the tourism sector had been rocked by terrorism, civil strife and diplomatic fallouts. Over the last six months, Turkey has increasingly become a target for the Islamic State group, which specifically targets locations popular with international tourists. All told, Turkish tourism receipts fell 36 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2016, and this does not take into account cancelations and tepid demand as the country enters a period of “national emergency.” Both the refugee and security issues present specific spillover challenges for the Turkish economy that we dive into in this excerpt from the full film.

In our second bonus video, we shift the focus from Turkey’s southeast, to its west, investigating economic complications between Turkey and the EU.

Economic relations between the European Union and Turkey make a lot of sense on paper. In fact, production chains shared between the EU and Turkey have been fundamental to Turkey’s strong economic performance in recent years. However, these ties may be under increasing pressure, as we investigate in this second bonus video for The Crossroads Turkey.

We hope you enjoy these clips, and make sure to check out our full episode – The Crossroads Turkey – here!!!