Turkey

Turkey Intro of the EU' Turkey Brief country overview “The lands of Turkey are located at a point where the three continents, making up the old world, Asia, Africa and Europe are closest to each other, and straddle the point where Europe and Asia meet” (http://www.turkishembassy.org/countryprofile/index.htm). With a population of 68,109,469(July 2003) growing at a rate of 1.16% Turkey has two main ethnic groups; Turkish 80% and Kurdish 20% who are mostly Sunni Muslims covering a population of 99,8% with the other 0.2% being mostly Christians or Jews. Turkey gained its independence as a national state from the Ottoman Empire on 29 October 1923 and adopted a constitution only on 7 November 1982. The Gross Domestic Product for the year 2002 was $489.7 billion which is growing at a rate of 7.8%. The per capita GDP of Turkey is $7,300 (2002 est.). The inflation rate and unemployment rates remain high at 45.2% (2002 est.) and 10.8% (2002 est.) respectively. Turkey’s annual budget comprises of an exceeding expenditure over revenue; revenues at $42.4 billion and expenditure mount to $69.1 billion (2001). The industrial production growth rate is 8.5% for 2002. Turkey’s exports and imports for the year 2002 sum up to $35.1 billion turkey, 2002, billion, relations, rate, europe, union, observer, european, eu, est, area, year, two, turkey’s, population, point, overview, mostly, membership, history, growing, expenditure, eu-turkey, entering, eec, customs, current, country, copyright, brief, asia, application, zc, years, wtro