Abstract:

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkistan and Kazakhstan, which have ethnic, religious, historical and cultural ties with Turkey, came out of a closed and socialist economic system and gained their independence.  These countries, which have begun to look for partners and models, have been in cooperation in many areas with Turkey, which has recognized themselves first and has similar values internationally for 25 years. This study, which covers the years 2000-2017, examined the foreign trade relations between Turkey and the Turkish Republics and tried to reveal the direction, scale and sectoral distribution of the foreign trade of the countries of the region in general. Since the early 1990s, the trade relations between the Turkish Republics and Turkey, which are oriented towards liberalization in foreign trade, are continuously developing. However, considering the potential that the countries have, it seems that their foreign trade relations are far below what should be. The volume of foreign trade that Turkey made with Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkistan and Kazakhstan in 1992 was $267 million. This figure corresponds to the level of 0.7% of the volume of foreign trade in Turkey, while in 2017 these figures are quite low as $7.325 million and 1.8% respectively. Therefore, some structural arrangements and measures must be taken to improve commercial relations.

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