Size of its economy is relatively large. It ranks with in the top 20 countries in the world. Its monetary unit is Turkish Lira. Its capital is Ankara. Some of the largest cities are İstanbul, Ankara, and İzmir (ancient Smyrna).

Turkey, in most of its history, was known as an agricultural country. However, in the recent years, the economic size of the agriculture had shrunk considerably. On the other hand, industry and tourism grew to a significant size.

Turkey is rich in terms of natural resources. Coal, boron, and chromium are some of the minerals extracted in Turkey

Turkey, being originally an agriculture country, it grows almost everything except tropical produce. The principal crops are wheat, barley, tea, potato, sugar beets, olive, grain, citrus, cotton, tobacco, grape, hazelnut, and fig. Raising cattle and poultry is also an important activity.

Its major industries are iron, steal, coal, cement, textile, food, beverages, vehicles, and chemicals.

There are some regional differences. The western Anatolia and Marmara regions are more industrialized than the Eastern and South Eastern Anatolia.

It exports mainly agricultural produce, textile, and processed food. It imports almost everything, but the main imports are oil, machinery, electronic equipment. Its main trading partners are European Union, United States, Russian Federation, and Japan.

In the past Turkish economy was mostly underground economy. That is, people, mostly villagers, had a self sufficient system. They produce their own food. So the effect of this on the GDP was to give the impression that the Turkish living standards are very low. Lately as even the remote villages started moving into main economy and the average GDP per capita increased.

In recent years telecommunication, especially wireless communication developed rapidly in Turkey. Currently Cell phones became ubiquitous all over the country reducing the need for the land line infrastructure investment. Recent changes in laws allowed private citizens to set up radio and TV stations creating numerous radio and TV stations. Also number of Internet servers and internet users increased exponentially in the last few years.

Turkey like the US focused building highways as opposed to railways. As a result, most of the commercial transportation uses trucks and buses. Since the distances are relatively short and the standard of living is relatively low compared to the US, buses are more common than airplanes for the public transportation. Anatolia is a peninsula so the sea transportation is also important for both the domestic and international trading.

It has airports in all the major cities and seaports in all the coastal cities. Turkey has many rivers. Unfortunately, its rivers are not wide and deep enough for commercial transportation. However the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits carry a heavy domestic and international sea traffic. Turkey has an internal sea (the Sea of Marmara) around which the major industrial complexes were built. The Black Sea is connected to the Sea of Marmara through the Bosphorus strait and the Sea of Marmara is connected to the Aegean Sea through the Dardanelles strait. It also has a very big lake (Lake Van) that has a potential for the future as the southeastern Anatolia developed economically.

Turkey is an upper-middle income country. Also the income distribution is relatively even considering that Turkey is a capitalist country since its inception. In Turkey, maybe except İstanbul, you may not see very rich people and extravagant life styles and on the other hand you may not see very poor people either. Of course there will be some exceptions.