Handcrafts lead boom in Turkish cultural exports

ANKARA (AA) - Handcrafts took the lion's share of Turkish cultural good exports in 2015, according to official data released Wednesday.

Handcraft exports made up 70 percent of the country's cultural good exports, totaling 12.48 billion liras ($3.57 billion) last year, followed by audio and visual media with a 26.4 percent share, said the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).

Turkey's exports of cultural goods rose 120 percent from 8.1 billion liras ($2.3 billion) in 2011 to 17.8 billion liras ($5 billion) in 2015, according to official data.

Cultural goods' share of Turkey's overall exports last year was 4.6 percent, up from 3.6 percent in 2011, said the data.

Imports of cultural goods rose 66.1 percent to around 14.79 billion liras ($4.23 billion) in 2015 from 8.43 billion liras ($2.41 billion) in 2011. The share of cultural good imports in Turkey's yearly imports total rose from 2 percent in 2011 to 2.5 percent in 2015.

Turkey's cultural expenditures in 2015 reached 32.9 billion Turkish liras (around $9.41 billion), according to TurkStat data. In the country, 61.5 percent of that sum was laid out by the government while the rest – 38.5 percent – was spent by private bodies.