ON THE IMPORTANCE OF CAPITAL FLIGHT FROM TURKEY

Capital flight, which is defined as the transfer of the assets abroad by the residents of a country, is accepted as one of the important problems of the developing countries. in this paper, by utilizing two methods widely used in the literature concerned, the updated and revised estimates of capital flight are provided for turkey between the years 1975 and 2007. the findings of the paper suggest that total real capital flight from turkey is approximately $70 billion in the fixed dollar currency of the year 2000, which is greater than foreign direct investment inflows into turkey during the same period. this amount amounts to a significant loss of capital in turkey, which has been trying to attract foreign capital in order to finance her investments.