EVALUATION OF FREE ZONES AND ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS

Free zones have established along with the movement of liberalization in the globalized world economy. In the fluctuant world economy, free zones have important economic effects on trade system. Especially, free zones provide employment opportunities, foreign exchange income and technology transfers to the countries. Free zone applications have had a wide spread scope in Turkey after 1980. Today, the total number of free zones have reached 21 in Turkey. In this study, the concept of free zones, varieties, aims, advantages, disadvantages and economic impacts were tried to be explained. Then, contributions of free zones were analyzed on Turkish economy. According to results of analysis, the status of free zones was evaluated in Turkey.