Hierarchical structure of Turkey’s foreign trade

We examine the hierarchical structures of Turkey’s foreign trade by using real prices of their commodity export and import move together over time. We obtain the topological properties among the countries based on Turkey’s foreign trade during the 1996–2010 period by using the concept of hierarchical structure methods (minimal spanning tree, (MST) and hierarchical tree, (HT)). These periods are divided into two subperiods, such as 1996–2002 and 2003–2010, in order to test various time-window and observe the temporal evolution. We perform the bootstrap techniques to investigate a value of the statistical reliability to the links of the MSTs and HTs. We also use a clustering linkage procedure in order to observe the cluster structure much better. From the structural topologies of these trees, we identify different clusters of countries according to their geographical location and economic ties. Our results show that the DE (Germany), UK (United Kingdom), FR (France), IT (Italy) and RU (Russia) are more important within the network, due to a tighter connection with other countries. We have also found that these countries play a significant role for Turkey’s foreign trade and have important implications for the design of portfolio and investment strategies.