Turkey has been restructuring its economy since 1980 along the lines of a more liberal economic policy. In this context, more emphasis is being placed on private sector especially in productive sectors of economy and the role of State is limited to infrastructure development and the provision of public services.
The economic policy aims to diminish unemployment, to realize technology transfers, to privatize State Economic Enterprises, to overcome the deficit in the balance of payments and especially to increase the integration of the economy with the world economy and to attract more foreign capital to the Country. Turkey also uses the option of fiscal incentives to channelize domestic and foreign investments for industrial development and rural-urban integration.
These incentives or tax expenditures are usually available to investors for the promotion of private investment activities in selected sectors/regions depending on the scale of investment and in the following forms:
The Turkish Government introduced two incentive packages in 2016 (“centre of attraction” and “super incentives” which provide comprehensive support to the qualified investments.
The “centre of attraction” programme aims to balance the development level within the regions through increase in employment, production and exports whereas “super incentives” aim to meet any critically important current or future requirements of Turkey, develop technologic capacity in the fields that technologically Turkey fall behind, reduce dependency on imports/foreign sources, improve Turkey’s competitive power and support R&D focused investments.
The investment incentive regime as a general aims to further accelerate inbound investments over the course of the next few years and contribute to the employment with the new incentive programmes.