Teacher Professor

Turkish economy has a spectacular growth for several years! Are average income and buying power stronger now?

In comparison with the other countries, what is the ranking of Turkey? I mean : by individual ( not the national product ). Minimum income and average income are similar to EU and US now? For instance, how much is the salary of a worker, a waitress, a teacher, a policeman, a doctor, a senator, etc? Has Turkey's economy ( per citizen ) similarities with a middle-eastern country (example : Lebanon, Israel), a eastern-european country (example : Ukraine, Poland ), an asian country ( example :South Korea, Hong-Kong ), a south-american country ( example : Argentina or Colombia ),etc ?

Public Comments

1. i dont know exact numbers or stuff, but i've been to turkey and other countries. turkey is about in between poland and lebanon measured by living standart.
2. I don't know the exact numbers, but there has been a significant betterment in recent years, especially in health care facilities and education. Also the inflation has fallen to one digit levels after a few decades with very high inflation. (sometimes more than 100 %!) In the past, we weren't able to get medication in private health institutions and the government hospitals were horribly crowded. Now, we can have madication at almost everywhere and the expenditure is covered by the government. Almost every school has the internet connection and the schoolbooks are free until university. There is no province without a university and larger cities house several good quality universities. This year, however, things have begun to go a bit bad. The inflation is increasing. (10 %). The energy is getting more and more expensive and some interior political disputes and the general problems of the world economy are all affecting the economy badly. The government also seems to be a bit tired after a 6 year period in power.
3. There are some interesting statistics here: http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_TUR.html which seem to put Turkey below OECD countries, Europe and South America, on a par with East Asia and the Arab states and well above South Asia and Africa.
4. People in Turkey have lot more spending power than we have here in US. Its unbeliveable, everyone in Turkey complain about economy, jobs, government, but you should see it, everyone is buying everything! I have a college education and a decent job, but i still have to penny pinch everything here in the US, but in Turkey they work less and they still buy better expensive things than i can.
5. I am currently living in Turkey, and l have a flat , summer home and a car. The guy above is right, we have more buying power than Us.