The Relationship Between Economic Integration, Economic Growth and High Technology: Eurasian Economic Integration and Turkey

Subject and purpose of work Economic integration is an extremely important institutional structure for countries in international trade, which is highly competitive, with the level of globalisation, innovation and communication technology. Materials and methods Economic integration, which leads to the formation of a resilient economic wall, such as risk sharing, increasing investment opportunities, free trade structure, technology transfer opportunities, common competitiveness against countries outside the union, began in the modern world with the Second World War, and examples began to be seen around the world in the 1990s when globalisation accelerated. The analysis was carried out using the Todo-Yamamoto method in the SPSS program. Results Due to its geopolitical position (both historical and geographical proximity to Europe, Asia and the Middle East), Turkey is in a more advantageous position than other countries in the world in terms of establishing or becoming economically integrated. However, Turkey’s history of economic integration has been rather unsuccessful. The fact that it has not made a sufficient contribution to the integration it has established or attempted to become a member of, and that it has become a unipolar rather than a multipolar integrator, means that it has not achieved sufficient efficiency in terms of international trade. For this reason, our study analyses Turkey’s relationship with Eurasian economic integration, with the idea that Turkey is striving for multipolar integration. In our study, the impact of the Eurasian Economic Integration’s foreign trade with Turkey on Turkey’s economic growth and exports of high-tech products was analysed with the Todo-Yamamoto Co-Integration Test in two periods, 2002-2015 and 2015-2022. Conclusions As a result of the analysis, it is found that Eurasian Economic Integration has a positive effect on Turkey’s economic growth and exports of high-tech products. In the light of the data obtained, it has been assessed that the expansion of economic integration relations with the EEE and the benefits to be derived from the membership relationship will contribute to both Turkey’s economic growth and its technological infrastructure.