Where’s the feel-good factor in Turkey’s world-beating growth?

Turkey’s economic growth of 11.1 percent in the third quarter of 2017 was a jaw-dropping moment.

It is a growth rate that compares to the peak growth registered in the early 2000s by China, the world’s economic powerhouse. It propelled Turkey to the giddy heights of being the best-performing economy in the world during the third quarter of 2017.

The announcement of this astonishing level of growth in the country’s gross domestic product, a record for the last six years, was immediately pounced on by the government and its supporters to bolster their credentials.

The highest-ranking officials began citing it not just to show their success but to suggest that they had thwarted their opponents who were plotting their downfall through an “economic coup.”

Critics, however, maintained a healthy scepticism and asked why the effects of such tremendous growth were not being felt by the business community and the average person.

The data is sound. It was meticulously gathered and compiled by the Turkish statistical institute.

 

Read the whole story from Middle East Eye.

Featured image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons