Abstract:

Today, especially due to the liberal market economy, international trade has become widespread and the countries have entered an intense competitive environment. For this reason, countries are trying to increase their competitiveness in order to have their target market share in the international scope, to raise the level of society’s prosperity and to ensure economic growth. Today, countries with a production and export structure that can compete with foreign markets can stand out in the world markets by increasing their level of prosperity. For this purpose, different techniques are used to measure and compare the competitive forces of the countries. One of these measurement techniques is the Explained Comparative Excellence (ACU) method. In this context, the need to identify which product groups have the advantage or disadvantage in reducing their external dependence by making an assessment of the foreign trade of Turkey has formed the outcome point of this study. The aim of the study is to reveal the competitiveness of the 97 product groups compared to the 10 countries where Turkey exports the most. In this study, the method of Balassa was used. The study discussed the period 2005-2018 depending on the presence of common data. The data used in the analysis phase is obtained from the TradeMap database of the International Trade Classification. According to the analysis, it was found that Turkey has a comparative superiority in an average of 42 of 97 product groups, while 19 of these 42 product groups have a high competitive strength.

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