The Arab Spring and its Impact on the Foreign Trade of Turkey.

The Arab Spring refers to the stream of events which started in Tunisia, 2010, and then it spread to Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain and also impacted most countries of Middle East and North Africa (MENA). There were various social-cultural, political and economic effects which caused the Arab Spring. However, Arab Spring also affected the relations between the countries with regards to the areas of social-cultural, international politics and economics. In this research, especially the effects of Arab Spring on the foreign trade of Turkey from 2005 to 2015 have been discussed. An analysis of the exports and the imports have been included in this research, it has been observed that the export trend initially depicted an upward trend before the Arab Spring. However, after the outburst of the Arab Spring the trend was adversely affected but later the trend again improved. Generally, the import share showed a similar trend to the export share but the change in the import share was not as dramatic as the export share. The main reason behind the sharp increase in exports was that, Arab Spring adversely impacted the economic status of the countries and the political relations between Turkey and these countries transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]