The head of the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM) called on the government Thursday to abandon or overhaul its economic program, warning that manufacturers cannot survive borrowing costs near 50 percent as new data showed textile and apparel producers had shed 153,000 registered jobs in two years.
TİM President Mustafa Gültepe said during a panel discussion at the İstanbul Chamber of Industry (İSO) that companies needed room to recover before they could be expected to invest in brands and technology.
“I cannot breathe, and you are telling me to build an airplane,” Gültepe said. “I cannot breathe. I need to breathe. There are problems in all industries,” the Ekonomim news website reported.
Gültepe said exporters were losing existing markets as demand in Europe remained weak. Other speakers at the panel discussion said Turkish goods had become too expensive to compete abroad.
The number of companies seeking court-supervised debt restructuring had tripled over the past two or three years, Gültepe said. He contrasted earlier commercial borrowing rates of about 18 to 20 percent with rates near 50 percent and asked how any company could finance production at that cost for two years.
“Economic policies need to change,” Gültepe said, adding that measures to reduce production costs would still be necessary even if inflation fell below 20 percent.
An April employment bulletin released Thursday by the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) showed that textile and apparel manufacturing had lost 153,000 registered jobs over two years.
Apparel manufacturing lost 55,652 registered workers in the year to April, an 8.9 percent decline, while textile manufacturing lost 28,023. They recorded the two largest employment losses among 88 industries covered by the bulletin.
Insured employment across the economy, including retirees who continue working and pay a social security support premium, rose by 477,009 from a year earlier to 25.82 million. Registered salaried employment increased by 483,874 to about 19 million, even as 28 of the 88 industries recorded annual declines.
The İSO meeting focused on the risk of premature deindustrialization. İSO Deputy Assembly Chair Sadık Ayhan Saruhan said manufacturing’s share of national income fell from 19.5 percent in 2023 to 16.3 percent in 2025. He said inflation-adjusted sales among Turkey’s second 500 largest industrial companies grew by only 0.2 percent last year.
İSO Chair Erdal Bahçıvan called for the government’s economic program to protect production capacity, reduce vulnerabilities and support investment in technology without abandoning its main objectives.
Gültepe’s warning came as the Turkish Central Bank held its policy rate at 37 percent for a fourth consecutive meeting. Annual consumer inflation stood at 32.11 percent in June, while commercial loan rates remained above the benchmark.