Services are playing an increasingly important role as a buffer in Türkiye’s external trade balance. In 2024, services exports amounted to $117.2 billion, imports to $55.8 billion, and the services trade surplus to $61.4 billion (TÜİK, 2025). But the lion’s share of that surplus comes from travel and transportation. Travel revenues were approximately $56.3 billion and transportation revenues around $41.0 billion in 2024 (Ministry of Trade, 2026, p. 55). In other words, tourism and logistics account for much of the surplus.

When these sectors perform well, they provide relief for the current account. At the same time, however, such a composition makes the services balance more vulnerable to geopolitical shocks, perceptions of insecurity, global recession, and pandemics.

There are also less visible deficits within services trade. For example, Türkiye paid roughly $4.3 billion for the use of intellectual property—royalties and licenses—in 2024, while revenues from the same category remained below $0.6 billion. The net position is substantially negative. Imports also exceed exports in the category of other business services. In short, Türkiye is strong in tourism and transportation, but remains a net importer of technology, software, brands, and high-value-added professional services (Ministry of Trade, 2026, p. 55).

Although services exports can partly offset the trade deficit in manufactured goods, they do not seem to offer a permanent solution on their own. The merchandise trade deficit is larger and more volatile. We cannot cover everything through tourism. The services surplus needs to become more resilient and more oriented toward high value added.

First, the quality of tourism and logistics needs to improve: longer stays, higher spending per visitor, demand spread more evenly across the year, and greater specialization in areas such as conferences, healthcare, and education.

We also need to strengthen the competitiveness of exporting manufacturers by adding layers of services: after-sales support, maintenance, spare parts, remote monitoring, data-driven design, and engineering services. By combining products and services, Türkiye can raise the unit value of product exports and establish long-term customer relationships that make foreign-currency earnings more stable.

Türkiye accounted for approximately 1.32 percent of global services exports in 2024 (Ministry of Trade, 2026, p. 53), suggesting substantial potential for growth. Rather than finding reassurance in tourism revenues alone, we need to build a services economy capable of generating intellectual property income.

If such a transformation takes place, services will cease to be a spare tire temporarily covering deficits in manufactured goods and will become a foundation strengthening the country’s competitiveness.

REFERENCES

Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Trade. (2026). Economic outlook: December 2025.

Turkish Statistical Institute. (2025). International trade in services statistics, 2024 (News Bulletin No. 54191).