AN APPLICATION OF GRAVITY MODEL ON TURKEY'S EXPORTS WITH REGIONAL ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS: ARE THERE ANY OTHER ALTERNATIVES TO EU?

With globalization, the barriers on international trade have been reduced and commercial relations among countries have strengthened. In the post 1980 period, regionalization process accelerated and led to the formation of trade blocs in the new world order. This situation has raised the question of which trade bloc Turkey will take part in. In this paper, Gravity Model was used on Turkey’s exports with different regional economic organizations and it was questioned whether there are any strong alternatives to EU. In the model EU, NAFTA, APEC, ASEAN, GCC and AEC are chosen as dependent variables since these regional integrations have significant shares in the world economy. The results show that the EU seem to be an indispensable partner for Turkey but its trade relations with Asian, Middle East and African countires need to be further improved. Moreover, the free trade agreements (FTA) and CU have positive effects on exports, but still CU ‘s effect is more significant