Having entered a recession in the third quarter of the year, the Turkish economy has been heading for a crisis in the fourth quarter, available indicators show. A 6% drop in the industrial production index, released in mid-December, and a 7% shrinkage in the retail sales volume are both important omens of a depression.
The September unemployment data, released Dec. 17, were supplementary indicators of the recession quarter. The jobless rate hit 11.4% in September, up from 10.6% in September 2017. The army of jobless grew by 330,000 people over a year, reaching nearly 3.8 million.