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How does the country’s economy compare with those of the EU?
SOME of the concerns surrounding Turkey’s application to join the European Union, to be voted on by the EU’s Council of Ministers on December 17th, are economic-in particular, the country’s relative poverty. Its GDP per head is less than a third of the average for the 15 pre-2004 members of the EU. But it is not far off that of one of the ten new members which joined on May 1st 2004 (Latvia), and it is much the same as those of two countries, Bulgaria and Romania, which this week concluded accession talks with the EU that could make them full members on January 1st 2007.
Furthermore, the country’s recent economic progress has been, according to Donald Johnston, the secretary-general of the OECD, "stunning". GDP in the second quarter of the year was 13.4% higher than a year earlier, a rate of growth that no EU country comes close to matching. Turkey’s inflation rate has just fallen into single figures for the first time since 1972, and this week the country reached agreement with the IMF on a new three-year, $10 billion economic programme that will, according to the IMF’s managing director, Rodrigo Rato, "help Turkey... reduce inflation toward European levels, and enhance the economy’s resilience".
Resilience has not historically been the country’s economic strong point. As recently as 2001, GDP fell by over 7%. It fell by more than 5% in 1994, and by just under 5% in 1999. Indeed, throughout the 1990s growth oscillated like an electrocardiogram recording a violent heart attack. This irregularity has been one of the main reasons (along with red tape and corruption) why the country has failed dismally to attract much-needed foreign direct investment. Its stock of such investment (as a percentage of GDP) is lower now than it was in the 1980s, and annual inflows