Baycan, Tüzin; Tuysuz, Suat

This Special Feature investigates the social, economic, and spatial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey and highlights the factors differentiating Turkey from the other countries. The articles contributing to this Special Feature are classified into three main parts. The first group of articles addresses spatial implications of the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey with a specific focus on the place-based factors affecting the spread of the pandemic, the determinants of pandemic-induced changes in intracity mobility, and the use of social media to forecast commercial real estate figures during COVID-19. The second group of articles investigates the social and economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and diversely affected economic sectors in Turkey. These articles analyze the vulnerability and resilience of regions and diversely affected economic sectors with a specific focus on the housing market that displays an opposite trend to international tendencies regarding transaction volumes and private rental housing prices. The third group of articles considers the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic from an international perspective. These articles analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international trade with a specific focus on exports and the fragility of the global trade structure and network in the framework of global value chains. Analyzing the impacts of COVID-19 from different perspectives, the articles in this Special Feature reveal the factors differentiating Turkey from the other countries and highlight the challenges.

Tuysuz, Suat; Baycan, Tüzin; Altuğ, Fatih

The COVID-19 outbreak has deeply affected the global economy of most countries and Turkey is no exception. However, the impacts of the outbreak differ on a regional basis, and both scientists and policymakers have neglected this regional differentiation. In an attempt to redress this situation, our study aimed to reveal the regional disparities related to the economic impacts of the outbreak and the dynamics that created this differentiation in Turkey. Our statistical analyses were carried out based on two different periods. The first period covered the first trimester when the outbreak began, and several shutdowns were implemented. The second period covered the second trimester when society began to open up again. The first trimester was termed the shock period, and the second trimester the recovery period. We developed a resilient–vulnerability index based on selected variables such as employment, energy consumption, exports, and the number of companies established and closed using a location quotient (LQ) analysis. While our index offers a picture of resilient and vulnerable regions, we also used this index as a dependent variable in our study. In the second stage, we focused on what kinds of dynamics gave rise to the resilience or vulnerability of a region. Our findings revealed that regions are economically affected by the outbreak at different levels. The regression analysis results showed that the innovation capacity and export levels of the regions predict regional resilience negatively, while firm size predicts positively. The recovery of regions also differed regionally. Our analyses show that Turkish regions with relatively larger economies recover more slowly, while regions with smaller economies recover more quickly.

Cengiz, Orhan; Manga, Müge

The COVID-19 pandemic, a new type of coronavirus that the world faced, broke out at the end of 2019 causing numerous impacts on all countries. Particularly the European Union (EU) countries were notably affected by COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and stringency policies. Furthermore, although Turkey was successful in combating many areas of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the EU countries, its international trade was affected. This paper empirically investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on selected EU countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Czechia) and Turkey’s exports with monthly panel data analyses over the March 2020–December 2021 period. The findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic had negative impacts on exports in the EU and Turkey. For example, a 1% increase in COVID-19 stringency reduced exports by 0.102%, and a 1% increase in total COVID-19 cases caused a decline in exports of 1.620%. Furthermore, the Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel causality test results show a two-way causality relationship between COVID-19 cases and export levels. In addition, unidirectional causality linkage exists from the COVID-19 stringency index. Therefore, causality test results confirm an impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on exports during the stringency measures and lockdowns.