Türkiye's Economy Cools to 2.1% Growth in the Third Quarter of 2024

Türkiye's economy grew by 2.1% in the third quarter of 2024 compared with the same period a year earlier, official figures published on Friday, 29 November 2024 showed. The release by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), reported by Anadolu Agency, confirmed that the pace of expansion continued to slow through the year and produced the weakest quarterly print of 2024 so far.

The data put Türkiye firmly in a cooling phase: growth that ran above 5% at the start of the year had lost more than half of its momentum by the autumn, exactly the trajectory policymakers had been engineering as part of the disinflation programme.

A year of steadily fading momentum

The quarterly sequence published by TurkStat shows a consistent deceleration rather than a single weak quarter:

• Q1 2024: GDP expanded 5.3% year on year;
• Q2 2024: growth slowed to 2.4%;
• Q3 2024: the economy added 2.1% year on year;
• full-year 2023, for comparison: 5.1%.

Against that backdrop, the third-quarter figure was also below market expectations: an Anadolu survey conducted the same week had predicted growth of 2.6% for the July–September period, so the official print undershot that consensus by half a percentage point.

Current-price output and what the numbers mean

In nominal terms, gross domestic product at current prices reached 11.89 trillion Turkish liras in the July–September period, equivalent to $357.99 billion. For an economy where headline inflation has remained elevated, the gap between nominal and real growth is the key to reading the release: in lira terms the economy looks far larger than the 2.1% real increase suggests, and it is precisely that inflation overhang that the monetary tightening of the past two years was designed to squeeze out.

The third-quarter print matters beyond the headline for three reasons:

1. it confirms that tighter financial conditions are transmitting to real activity, not only to prices;
2. it sets a low base for the fourth quarter, making the full-year 2024 outcome highly dependent on the October–December data;
3. it gives the central bank evidence that demand-side pressure is easing, which is the precondition for any future move towards monetary easing.

What to watch next

TurkStat's quarterly national accounts are revised as more complete data arrive, so the 2.1% figure may be adjusted in later releases; the full-year 2024 GDP estimate will only be published in early 2025. Until then, the sequence of 5.3%, 2.4% and 2.1% remains the clearest single indicator of how fast the Turkish economy was cooling in the second half of 2024.

Source: Anadolu Agency, "Turkish economy grows 2.1% in Q3", 29 November 2024.