2023 vision

• Become one of the top ten world economies by 2023
• Gross domestic product of $1 trillion by 2014 (Assessment: $0.934 trillion in 2014)[1] and of $2 trillion by 2023
• Per capita income of $25,000 by 2023
• Increase annual Turkish exports to $500 billion by 2023
• Foreign trade volume of $1 trillion by 2023
• Increase the employment rate by 10 points to a working population of 30 million by 2023
• Reduce the unemployment rate to 5 percent by 2023
• Addition of income through applying duty on ocean trade through Straits of Bosphorus and Dardanelles.

Progress on economic goals

Former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu

• Build 20,000 Megawatt installed capacity of wind energy and 600 Megawatt installed capacity of geothermal energy[4]
• Reduce energy consumption to 20 percent below 2010 levels through improved efficiency[5]
• Three operating nuclear power plants and those plants are expected to have an installed capacity of 14,700 Megawatt.

Turkey's foreign-policy objectives and vision as articulated by former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu:

First, Turkey aims to achieve all EU membership conditions and become an influential EU member state by 2023. Second, it will continue to strive for regional integration, in the form of security and economic cooperation. Third, it will seek to play an influential role in regional conflict resolution. Fourth, it will vigorously participate in all global arenas. Fifth, it will play a determining role in international organizations and become one of the top 10 largest economies in the world. To achieve them, Turkey must make progress in all directions and in every field, take an interest in every issue related to global stability, and contribute accordingly.[6]

In 2016, President Erdogan called for a referendum after Britain's decision on leaving the European Union.

• 100 percent participation in health insurance systems
• Raise the number of physicians per 100,000 people to 210 physicians (175 currently)

• Build 11 thousand kilometers of new railway and expand the high-speed train network
• Build 15 thousand kilometers of divided highway
• Grow ports to number among world's 10 largest
• Domestically produced airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles and satellite[7]

• Be the fifth largest tourist destination[8]
• Host 50 million visitors
• Obtain US$50 billion of tourism revenue[9]

Progress on tourism goals

On the summer of 2016, a coup d'état was attempted in Turkey against state institutions, including the government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The attempt was carried out by a faction within the Turkish Armed Forces that organized themselves as the Peace at Home Council.[11] They attempted to seize control of several key places in Ankara, Istanbul, and elsewhere, but failed to do so after forces loyal to the state defeated them.

During the coup, over 300 people were killed and more than 2,100 were injured. Many government buildings, including the Turkish Parliament and the Presidential Palace, were bombed from the air. Mass arrests followed, with at least 40,000 detained,[12] including at least 10,000 soldiers and 2,745 judges. A significant amount of tourists cancelled their trip to Turkey.

The Turkish currency and debt crisis of 2018 was a financial crisis in Turkey. It is characterized by a plunging value of the Turkish lira, high inflation, rising borrowing costs and corresponding loan defaults.

Under the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has been running huge and growing current account deficits, reaching $7.1 billion by January 2018, while the rolling 12-month deficit rose to $51.6 billion.[13] By the end of 2017, the corporate foreign-currency debt pile in Turkey had more than doubled since 2009, to $214 billion after netting against their foreign-exchange assets, equal to about 40 percent of economic output, with about 80 percent held by domestic banks.[14]

In 2018, the lira's exchange rate accelerated deterioration, reaching a level of US$4.5/TRY by mid-May. Among economists, the accelerating loss of value was generally attributed to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan preventing the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey from making the necessary interest rate adjustments.[16][17] Erdogan, who claimed interest rates beyond his control to be "the mother and father of all evil", said that "the central bank can't take this independence and set aside the signals given by the president."[16]

In 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan coined the term "mastermind" (Turkish: üst akıl) to denote the alleged command and control institution, somewhat ambiguously placed with the government of the United States, in a comprehensive conspiracy to weaken or even dismember Turkey, by orchestrating every political actor and action perceived hostile by Turkey.[18][19][20] Erdoğan as well as the Daily Sabah have on multiple occasions alleged that very different non-state actors — like the Salafi jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Anarcho-Marxist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Islamist cult with political ambitions around Fethullah Gülen — were attacking Turkey at the same time in a well-coordinated campaign.[21] A notable instance of promoting the "Mastermind" conspiracy theory was in February 2017 Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek claiming that earthquakes in the western province of Çanakkale could have been organized by dark external powers aiming to destroy Turkey's economy with an "artificial earthquake" near Istanbul.[22]

In the campaign for the 2018 general election in Turkey, a widespread conspiracy theory, infused with antisemitism, claimed that the Turkish lira's decline were the work of a shadowy group, made up of Americans, English, Dutch and "some Jewish families" who would want to deprive incumbent President Erdogan of support in the elections.[23]