An Alternative Market to European Union for Turkey: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation

Increasing competition in the world by the help of globalization has directed countries to cooperation with other countries and interregional organizations. Nowadays competition in foreign trade is becoming more and more challenging due to globalization process and countries use the most important alternatives, economic integrations to export and import. The new idea of creating new regional alternatives to increase foreign trade for Turkey is becoming more important day by day. Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) which is being created under the leadership of Turkey has an important share on Turkish foreign trade after G20, OECD and Customs Union. Though OIC has occupied an important place in Turkish foreign trade it is least known and this study searches whether OIC can become an alternative in future. In order to answer this question, the performance analysis of foreign trade was conducted with the help of macroeconomic indicators while the analysis of foreign trade compliance was held with the help of international foreign trade indices. As a result of foreign trade compliance analysis it is concluded that importance of Organization of Islamic Cooperation is increasing every day. Though foreign trade between Turkey and Customs Union reduced, foreign trade between Turkey and OIC increased and that result shows that Turkey turns his face to markets of OIC. However foreign trade between Turkey and OIC can just be alternative to Custom union in further years.