Abstract
SUMMARY The importance of land transportation on tranportation is apparent. Today it is even boring to think about a living style without private and mass transportation vehicles. The early studies in the world automotive industry began during 1770s, gained acceleration with the mass production in 1914 and became an important industrial area for state economies. Nowadays automative industry is a leading sector with regard to technological renovation, income increase, employment generation and foreign exchange earnings. Because of these characteristics countries appoint various politics with the aim of developing automotive industry like technology transfer, investment discount, effective protection and promotion. The early attempts in the Turkish automotive industry began in the form of assembly industry and gained acceleration by the issue of Montaj İmal Tadil Talimatnamesi in 1964. By 1994, Turkish automotive industry became a leading sector with its 270 000 unit production and 500 000 employees inculuding the subcontracting industry. But attempts for unconstxaining the world external trade (GATT) and regional economic cooperation movements forced state economies to compete with world economies. From the view of Turkey, Customs union agreement is added to these. All these developments has brought the necessity of examining the factors that determine the ability of Turkish automotive industry to compete with EC automotive industry and its competitive strength.,r- EC countries that are at the first lines and perform nearly the 25 percent of total employment, are striving for supporting automotive industry which has become a key industry in terms of export and generation of value added. Comununity's automotive industry had entered a period of stagnation beginning with the early 1990s because of the full up of its market demand and the lose of competitive strength towards Japon in international markets. Because of these reasons attemps are being done for restructuring. Despite all these negativities, indexs and especially the high demand shaping the market of main and subcontracting automotive industry have been strengthening the industry's future potential.IV When all these are taken into consideration, the investigation of the competitive strength of state economies has gained importance. In the first part of the study which was composed of three parts, economical uniting types and among these as important uniting type of customs union has been emp hasized. Within this theoretical framework the effects that the customs union would tring forth was evaluated with regard to the economic positions of the countries. In the second part of the study, the historical development of automotive industry has been analyzed and Knowledge about the present situation has been given. In the third part of the study, the competitive ability of Turkish automotive industry among EC automotive industry has been examined with regard to production, effectiveness, cost, sale price, sale income, import-export, subcontracting industry, promotion and research and development spendings. As a result of the investigations performed, it has been determined that Turkish automotive industry has no competitive strength towards EC automotive industry. Turkish automotive industry is in the need of a master plan to reach the level to compete with it. This master plan moust be put into application in the direction of long term targets by taking the present problems into consideration.
