Türkiye offers ample opportunities and continues to be an attractive investment destination. The Turkish economy posted growth rates of 3.5 percent in Q4 2016 and 5 percent in Q1 2017. In monetary terms, Türkiye attracted USD 11 billion of FDI during the August 2016 to June 2017 period, with the first six months of 2017 seeing FDI equity investments inflow into Türkiye surging 50 percent y-o-y to USD 4.1 billion.
Reforms that began to be implemented as early as 2002 quickly bore fruit as the investment environment in Türkiye improved considerably. Several multinationals invested in Türkiye, and many of those have continued to expand their investments over the past 15 years. Some companies have gone as far as to position Türkiye as their regional management and manufacturing base.
The latest example of this is Anadolu Group’s USD 110 million beverage factory investment in the Isparta province of Türkiye. Anadolu Group owns 50.3 percent of Coca-Cola Türkiye. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the new production facilities, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan praised the continued confidence that investors were showing in Türkiye. He pointed out that sustainable FDI inflow to Türkiye is important, while underlining that sweeping reforms have been introduced over the past decade to provide foreign investors with an attractive and safe investment climate. Among the other recent large-scale investments that had been made in Türkiye, he singled out Siemens Gamesa, a member of the consortium who won the tender held for the construction of a 1-GW wind power plant as part of the second of Renewable Energy Resource Zones (YEKA) auction in Türkiye, and the Istanbul İkitelli City Hospital Project, a joint USD 1.5 billion investment of Turkish and Japanese companies. Erdoğan went on to highlight that FDI inflow into Türkiye reached USD 181 billion in the 2002-2016 period, which was significantly more than the USD 13.5 billion raised during the prior 1984-2001 period.
Chairman of the Board of Directors of US-based Coca-Cola Company, Muhtar Kent, also delivered a speech during the opening ceremony. He strongly reiterated their belief in Türkiye's potential and acknowledged that Coca-Cola will continue investing in the country with their partners.
The United States is an important investment and trade partner for Türkiye due to a long standing economic and political partnership and the fact that the US is the world’s largest foreign investor. The US ranks number 5 in Türkiye’s exports and number 4 in imports. As of the end of 2016, the trade volume between Türkiye and the US was around USD 17.5 billion. Also during 2016, 7 percent of foreign direct investments into Türkiye originated from the USA. According to the American Business Forum in Türkiye (Amcham Türkiye), their 135 members invested USD 54 billion in Türkiye so far and have contributed to the creation of nearly 90,000 jobs.