Abstract:

Turkey should strengthen global commercial position in the world to realize the economic growth desire. Foreign trade is the primary means of integration with the world economic system. Today, every country can only realize economic growth or development by having activities of export and import. The aim of the work in this direction in Turkey to investigate between exports, imports and economic growth relations in the short and long-term.  For this, 1980-2016 annual data was used in the study. As a method, the ARDL Boundary Testing Approach, which is one of the most recent methods in the literature, has been applied. Short-run relationships were also observed with error correction models after the boundary test was performed to determine the long-term cointegration relationship between variables. Both export-driven growth hypothesis and import-growth hypothesis is valid in Turkey, according to the findings. In addition, in the long run, there was a co-integration relationship between exports and imports. It is also the result of long-term relationships between variables in the short-run. As a result, according to this study, Turkey should be more involved in the international business system should lead to more external economies of other words. Direct or indirect measures to prevent foreign trade should not be resorted to. However, the traditional foreign trade sector in particular to developing countries, which Turkey must shift weight to information and technology-based industry gradually.

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