By the first quarter of 2009, Turkey’s GDP was falling by 14.7 percent on an annualized basis. Unemployment rocketed from 8.6 percent in the summer of 2008 to 14.6 percent in the first winter of the crisis. It was the worst affected of any of the emerging markets outside Eastern Europe. Turkey had not seen a situation so bad as this since the disastrous financial crisis of 2001.
