The Protein Sovereignty Index

Country assessment

Turkey

We assess Turkey as Exposed (62.0). It belongs to a small group of middle-income countries that produce almost all the protein their population eats and still export a surplus, yet upstream inputs are where the system actually binds: the agriculture ministry's own working figure is that Turkey imports 60 per cent of its feed raw materials, it bought some 2.5 million tonnes of urea worth about USD 1 billion in 2025, and 72 per cent of primary energy comes from abroad.[2][19][14]

Turkey manufactures 30.74 million tonnes of compound feed a year from inputs it does not control, and the 2026 Middle East conflict tested that arrangement within weeks by pushing fertiliser and fuel prices up about 25 per cent in a month.[1]

Outcome-level access indicators are comparatively strong, but a sub-investment-grade credit rating and a lira that has fallen from 7 to 44 per dollar since 2020 mean the financial capacity to buy through a future shock is thinner than the physical buffers alone suggest.

The protein system

Turkey feeds 85.7 million people at 119.7 grams of protein per person per day, roughly double physiological requirement.[7][6] Poultry is the largest and most export-oriented component: production is forecast at 2.9 million tonnes for 2026 against domestic consumption of 2.455 million tonnes, with 445,000 tonnes exported and no imports at all.[3] Dairy runs on 21 million tonnes of raw cow milk, down from 23 million tonnes before 2022.[2] Red meat comes from a 14.3 million head cattle herd and 54.9 million sheep and goats, delivering 1.8 million tonnes of beef against 2.0 million tonnes of consumption.[2] Aquaculture is the fastest growing and most internationally competitive component, at 577,124 tonnes farmed in 2024 within a total aquatic output of 933,000 tonnes and USD 2.24 billion of exports in 2025.[8][9]

The staple base is domestic in a good year and marginal in a bad one. Wheat production is forecast at 19.8 million tonnes for 2026/27 after drought cut the 2025/26 crop to 16.5 million tonnes, against total consumption of 18.8 million tonnes.[1] Turkey nonetheless imports 6.5 to 7.2 million tonnes of wheat, largely under the inward processing regime that supplies a flour and pasta export business running on roughly 550 mills with 33 million tonnes of capacity.[1]

What Turkey buys, therefore, is feed and inputs rather than protein. Food was 6.21 per cent of merchandise imports in 2024, and food and agriculture exports were USD 35.4 billion against USD 6.8 billion of consumer-oriented agricultural imports.[15][6] This is the shape the index is designed to distinguish: a large producer whose sovereignty question sits one step back in the supply chain.

Durable domestic capacity: 67

Quantitative score 72, adjusted down 5 points

On output, Turkey scores well. Poultry, eggs, dairy products and farmed fish are all net exports, and per capita meat consumption of 51 kg is met overwhelmingly from domestic slaughter.[2][3] Durability is where the score is capped. The cattle inventory is projected to fall 4 per cent in 2026 as farmers liquidate herds, and USDA's Ankara post identifies the slaughter of breeding animals as the single biggest risk to the sector's sustainability.[2] Slaughter weights have fallen from over 400 kg to between 270 and 300 kg, annual calf losses run at 400,000 to 500,000 head, and a farmgate milk reference price of 18.35 lira per litre against a producer cost of 20.50 lira explains the direction of travel.[2]

We applied a -5 adjustment on two grounds that the self-sufficiency ratios conceal. First, poultry output above domestic demand is contingent on the inward processing regime, which admits duty-free feed grain and oilseed specifically for export production; USDA judges that the regime dilutes the incentive to reduce feed import dependence, which makes the surplus an assembly margin rather than a production margin.[3] Second, the biological base is repeatedly interrupted: over 3.5 million laying hens were culled in late 2024 to avian influenza, and all livestock markets were closed from 30 June 2025 after a new foot-and-mouth serotype, SAT-1, entered from the south-east.[3][2]

Resource headroom: 50

Quantitative score 44, adjusted up 6 points

Water is the constraint and the state has begun rationing around it. Per capita water availability fell to 1,301 cubic metres in 2025 against the 1,700 cubic metre threshold conventionally used to define water-rich status.[11] The World Bank's measure of total internal renewable resources gives a materially higher 2,671 cubic metres per person for 2022;[12] we scored on the lower figure because usable potential, rather than gross runoff, governs irrigation allocation, and we report both. The clearest evidence that headroom has run out is that the government's Agricultural Production Plan is deliberately shrinking maize area by 10 per cent to 550,000 hectares in Central Anatolia and the Aegean to conserve water, and dairy farmers in the west are substituting sorghum for maize for the same reason.[1][2]

The land base itself has been shrinking for a generation. Arable land fell from 23.8 to 20.2 million hectares and cropland from 26.4 to 24.0 million hectares between 2000 and 2024, a fall of 35 and 30 per cent respectively per person once population growth is priced in.[35][37] The protein mix built on what remains is feed-intensive and the feed base is rainfall-dependent. Arable land runs at a moderate 0.24 hectares per person,[13] around 85 per cent of maize consumption goes to animal feed, 80 per cent of wheat and barley is grown on dryland, and yields swing violently: sunflowerseed yields fell to 1.58 tonnes per hectare in 2025/26 from 2.21 in 2023/24, with reported losses above 50 per cent in Thrace.[1][4] Capture fisheries offer no expansion room: 52 per cent of assessed Mediterranean and Black Sea stocks were still overexploited in 2023, and Turkey already takes 31.4 per cent of regional landings and 43 per cent of regional aquaculture output, so the regional ceiling constrains Turkey's own catch as much as anyone's.[10]

Water banking on the shrinking base is nonetheless real and already under way, not merely planned. Land equipped for irrigation rose from 4.7 to 7.2 million hectares between 2000 and 2024, and the equipped share of arable land nearly doubled, from 20 to 36 per cent, with most of the gain concentrated since 2020.[35][36] The Southeastern Anatolia Project, the flagship vehicle for that investment, has 18 of 22 dams and 14 of 19 hydropower plants operating and about 72 per cent of planned irrigation infrastructure built, but delivery to the field lags construction: 675,250 hectares of an original 1.8 million hectare master-plan target had been opened to irrigation by the end of 2024, 37 per cent after four decades, and the 2024-2028 action plan revised the near-term target down to 1.1 million hectares.[39] Agricultural credit is a genuine strength that the standard international series misstates. One international reading of Turkey's credit-to-agriculture ratio collapses to a near-zero orientation index by 2023, but no other indicator corroborates it: Turkish banks' agriculture, forestry and fishing credit stock reached 582.05 billion lira at the end of 2023 and 689.1 billion lira by June 2024, about 6.5 per cent of total national credit against agriculture's 6.4 per cent share of GDP, close to parity, led by the state's Ziraat Bank with over 70 per cent market share and heavily subsidised interest rates.[34][38][40]

The +6 adjustment credits two tested sources of mobilisation capacity, funded and accelerating irrigation investment and a credit market close to parity with agriculture's economic weight, alongside one measured but unfunded physical margin: 13.1 million hectares of pasture producing an average of 700 kg of hay per hectare against 5.8 tonnes per hectare on European pastures, a gap the agriculture ministry's own research directorate attributes to management and tenure rather than agronomy.[2] Two points come out of that credit to price in the land-base decline and the Southeastern Anatolia Project's four-decade delivery rate against its own target, neither of which a single-year stock figure would show.

Import exposure: 67

Quantitative score 62, adjusted up 5 points

Turkey imports very little finished protein. Chicken meat imports are nil, beef imports of 70,000 tonnes cover about 3.5 per cent of consumption, and dairy, eggs and seafood are all net exports.[3][2][9] The exposure lies in bulk grain and meal, and there the concentration is extreme in origin. Russia supplied 3.86 million tonnes of the 4.11 million tonnes of wheat landed between June 2025 and January 2026, about 94 per cent of the total; Ukraine and Russia together supplied roughly 95 per cent of maize arrivals over September to January; and Russia provided 883,000 of 983,000 tonnes of sunflower meal in 2024/25, close to 90 per cent.[1][4] Turkey's grain supply is effectively a single-basin dependency on an active war zone. Soybean imports, forecast at 4.55 million tonnes for 2026/27, are the one bulk input not dominated by the Black Sea basin; no reliable bilateral origin breakdown is available, so the supplier mix is not scored as a diversification strength.[5]

The +5 adjustment recognises chokepoint sovereignty, which concentration statistics cannot express. Turkey operates the Turkish Straits rather than transiting them as a customer, and it co-brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative with the Joint Coordination Centre seated in Istanbul, taking roughly 3.2 million tonnes of Ukrainian agricultural product for itself while the corridor moved 32.9 million tonnes over 1,004 voyages.[20] Cargoes land on four coastlines and overland routes remain open. No third party can close Turkey's food supply lines in the way Hormuz was closed on Gulf importers in 2026.

Upstream dependence: 41

Quantitative score 38, adjusted up 3 points

Upstream dependence is what holds Turkey where it is. Feed accounts for 65 to 75 per cent of dairy and beef farm expenditure, and about 60 per cent of feed raw material is imported.[2] Soybean imports are forecast at 4.55 million tonnes for 2026/27 with a further 1.75 million tonnes of soybean meal; about half of the 2.1 million tonnes of sunflower meal consumed is imported; maize imports of 5.7 million tonnes cover close to half of a 12.0 million tonne consumption; and 1.25 million tonnes of wheat bran were imported between June 2025 and January 2026, 880,000 tonnes of it from Russia.[5][4][1]

Fertiliser carries the same dependence with worse geography. Turkey imported about 2.5 million tonnes of urea worth USD 1 billion in 2025, with Oman-declared cargoes at 38.1 per cent, Egypt at 617,600 tonnes and Qatar and the UAE at 5.4 per cent.[19] A second account puts volumes at 2.7 million tonnes with Iran at roughly 44 per cent, the discrepancy explained by Iranian material being declared as Omani.[18] Either way, a large share of Turkish nitrogen transits Hormuz. When the strait closed in early 2026, urea rose over 30 per cent to USD 647.50 per tonne, and Ankara removed the 6.5 per cent urea import duty on 7 March, banned urea exports and suspended its ammonium nitrate restriction.[19][18][1] Breeding stock is also bought in: a 15 per cent gap in poultry parent stock is filled from western Europe, and 450,000 to 460,000 cattle are imported annually, making Turkey the world's second largest live animal importer at USD 788 million in 2024.[3][2]

The +3 adjustment credits one genuinely sovereign critical input. The state foot-and-mouth institute produced 6 million doses of vaccine against the newly arrived SAT-1 serotype within weeks of detection, with 2.6 million more scheduled by 20 July 2025.[2] Domestic veterinary biologicals manufacture at that scale is unusual, and Turkey also converts its imported raw material at home through 30.74 million tonnes of compound feed capacity.[1]

Access and affordability: 80

Quantitative score 82, adjusted down 2 points

Turkey's outcome indicators are comparatively strong; its price signal is not. The World Bank/FAO Cost of a Healthy Diet series puts the share unable to afford a healthy diet at 4.6 per cent in 2024, down from 5.5 per cent in 2023 and 12.9 per cent in 2021,[23] which puts the pillar in the strongest scoring band; we place Turkey toward the upper part of that band, though its volatility and physical-access indicators are notably weaker than the rest of its profile. Undernourishment has sat at the 2.5 per cent reporting floor every year since 2009,[24] and the last national survey, the 2018 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey, found child stunting at 6.0 per cent, low but not exceptional, with no newer Joint Malnutrition Estimate published since.[25]

The genuine weakness is price volatility. Food inflation peaked at 102.55 per cent in November 2022, has averaged 20.85 per cent since 2004, and stood at 37.53 per cent in July 2026,[21] a level of volatility that has persisted for more than two decades. Physical access is uneven: a Logistics Performance Index score of 3.4 out of 5 places Turkey 38th of the 139 economies covered in 2023,[26] but the February 2023 earthquakes affected more than a fifth of national food production across eleven south-eastern provinces, the region FAO calls Turkey's Fertile Crescent and which supplies 14.5 per cent of agricultural GDP.[27] That border region hosts most of the 2.25 million Syrians still registered under temporary protection, down from a peak above 3.7 million in 2021, with more than 578,000 of that fall accounted for by returns after Syria's December 2024 change of government;[28] a small Istanbul survey of 103 refugee households found 90.3 per cent food insecurity, specific to that sampled population rather than the national rate.[29] We deduct 2 points because the last nationally representative stunting survey is six years old and predates the sharpest phase of lira depreciation; the volatility this staleness might otherwise obscure is already priced directly into the pillar through the food-inflation evidence above, so the adjustment prices only the stunting survey's age.

Shock endurance: 58

Quantitative score 53, adjusted up 5 points

Physical buffers are thin. Wheat stocks of 2.5 million tonnes in 2025/26, rising to a forecast 3.5 million, represent about two months of consumption; maize stocks of 841,000 tonnes cover under a month, barley 387,000 tonnes.[1] USDA notes that private traders deliberately minimise inventory because financial assets outperform carrying grain, which converts high inflation directly into a national stock deficit.[1] Against that, the state intervenes constantly and effectively.

Where endurance is failing is affordability rather than supply. Food inflation ran at 35.45 per cent in June 2026 against headline inflation of 32.11 per cent, the meat price index rose 487.9 per cent between 2021 and 2025, and per capita beef consumption fell from 22.89 kg in 2021 to 16.6 kg in 2024 as households moved into chicken and fish.[21][22][3] The lira went from 7 to the dollar in May 2020 to about 44 in March 2026.[1] Substitution is happening, driven by impoverishment as much as by policy. One conventional buffer does remain: 14.2 per cent of employment is still in agriculture, which keeps a large rural population inside the food system rather than dependent on retail supply.[17]

The +5 adjustment rests on demonstrated performance rather than declared preparedness. Across five consecutive years Turkey absorbed the 2023 earthquakes, the 2024 avian influenza epizootic, the 2025 foot-and-mouth incursion, a 2025 drought that removed about 2.5 million tonnes of wheat, and the 2026 fertiliser shock, without a physical protein shortage. The instruments were put to work rather than merely declared: TMO bought about a quarter of the wheat crop, imported barley to cap prices, and banned poultry meat exports for Ramadan 2026.[1]

Crisis purchasing power is comparatively weak. Reserves look adequate on their own terms, 4.73 months of import cover in 2024 and USD 185.6 billion including gold in 2025, comparable to far wealthier importers.[30][16] Market access is the constraint the reserve figure hides: Fitch, Moody's and S&P rate Turkey BB-, Ba3 and BB- respectively, three notches below investment grade across all three even after two years of upgrades, so external borrowing during a crisis costs materially more than it would for an investment-grade importer.[31][32] Social protection scale-up is similarly modest rather than strong: the IMF's own fiscal policy tracker records Turkey's direct COVID-19 fiscal support at 2.5 per cent of GDP, weighted to tax deferrals and the kısa çalışma short-time work allowance rather than a scaled cash safety net, with the heavier lifting done through rapid credit expansion via state banks;[33] we found no World Bank ASPIRE figure quantifying safety-net coverage or adequacy for Turkey, which we log as a gap rather than assume one. Crisis purchasing power scores 42; the indicators put the pillar overall at 53.

Trajectory

Two forces pull in opposite directions. The Agricultural Production Plan is the most consequential policy in the file, and it trades output for durability: less maize, less cotton, more wheat and drought-resistant crops in water-scarce basins.[1] If it holds, headroom improves while feed self-sufficiency worsens, which raises the weight of the upstream constraint rather than reducing it. Meanwhile the ruminant sector is contracting under a cost squeeze that live animal imports have never fixed, and USDA is explicit that importing feeder cattle has historically failed to raise herd numbers.[2]

What would move Turkey is narrow and identifiable. Domestic protein meal capacity, whether from expanded oilseed area, rehabilitation of the 13.1 million hectare pasture base, or alternative feed protein, is the highest-leverage change, because it attacks the pillar scoring 41. Diversifying nitrogen away from Hormuz-transiting suppliers is second. A published oilseed meal or feed reserve, which does not currently exist, would be third. Absent those, Turkey remains what this assessment finds: a country that can feed itself protein for as long as it can afford to buy the things that make it.

Sources

  1. Grain and Feed Annual, Turkiye (TU2026-0013) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026)
  2. Livestock and Products Annual, Turkiye (TU2025-0044) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026)
  3. Poultry and Products Annual, Turkiye (TU2025-0045) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2025)
  4. Oilseeds and Products Update, Turkiye (TU2025-0050) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2025)
  5. Oilseeds: World Markets and Trade, July 2026 · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026)
  6. Exporter Guide Annual, Turkiye (TU2025-0068) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026)
  7. Daily per capita protein supply, Turkiye (FAO Food Balance Sheets, data) · FAO, via Our World in Data (2025 (data 2023))
  8. Turkiye country profile: fisheries and aquaculture · Eurofish International Organisation (2025)
  9. Turkish aquaculture contributes significantly to economy, food security · Eurofish International Organisation (2026)
  10. The State of Mediterranean and Black Sea Fisheries 2025 (Highlights) · FAO General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (2025)
  11. Turkiye's per capita water availability falls below key threshold (TurkStat data) · Hurriyet Daily News (2026)
  12. Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (ER.H2O.INTR.PC) · World Bank World Development Indicators (2025 (data 2022))
  13. Arable land (hectares per person) (AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC) · World Bank World Development Indicators (2025 (data 2023))
  14. Energy imports, net (% of energy use) (EG.IMP.CONS.ZS) · World Bank World Development Indicators (2025 (data 2023))
  15. Food imports (% of merchandise imports) (TM.VAL.FOOD.ZS.UN) · World Bank World Development Indicators (2026 (data 2024))
  16. Total reserves including gold, current USD (FI.RES.TOTL.CD) · World Bank World Development Indicators (2026 (data 2025))
  17. Employment in agriculture (% of total employment) (SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS) · World Bank World Development Indicators (modelled ILO estimate) (2026 (data 2025))
  18. Turkey removes urea import duty · World Fertilizer (2026)
  19. Turkiye drops urea tariffs to shield farmers from fertilizer shock · Turkiye Today (2026)
  20. Black Sea Grain Initiative: achievements · United Nations (2023)
  21. Turkey food inflation (TurkStat data) · Trading Economics (2026)
  22. Turkey inflation rate (TurkStat data) · Trading Economics (2026)
  23. Share of population unable to afford a healthy diet, Turkiye (Cost of a Healthy Diet, CoHD headcount) · World Bank/FAO, via Our World in Data (World Bank DataBank unreachable during this research pass) (2026 (data 2024))
  24. Prevalence of undernourishment (% of population) (SN.ITK.DEFC.ZS) · World Bank World Development Indicators (FAO data) (2026 (data 2023))
  25. Prevalence of stunting, height for age (% of children under 5) (SH.STA.STNT.ZS) · World Bank World Development Indicators, from the Turkey Demographic and Health Survey via the WHO Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition (2026 (data 2018))
  26. Turkiye's Logistics Sector Aims for Top 25th Global Rank by 2028 (reporting World Bank Logistics Performance Index 2023) · Republic of Türkiye Investment Office (2023)
  27. Türkiye earthquakes: initial assessment indicates losses of more than 20 percent in food production · Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2023)
  28. Syrians in Turkey (compiling Presidency of Migration Management registry data) · Wikipedia (2026)
  29. Prevalence and risk factors of food insecurity among Syrian refugees in Türkiye · BMC Public Health (peer-reviewed) (2024)
  30. Total reserves in months of imports (FI.RES.TOTL.MO) · World Bank World Development Indicators (2026 (data 2024))
  31. Turkey Credit Rating · Trading Economics (S&P and Moody's rating actions) (2026)
  32. Fitch raises Türkiye credit outlook to positive, keeps BB- rating unchanged · Türkiye Today (2026)
  33. Database of Fiscal Policy Responses to COVID-19 (Turkey country entry) · International Monetary Fund (2021)
  34. Investment: Credit to Agriculture (data, Normalized), Turkiye · FAOSTAT (2026 (data 1999-2023))
  35. Inputs: Land Use (data, Normalized), Turkiye · FAOSTAT (2026 (data 1961-2024))
  36. Agricultural irrigated land (% of total agricultural land) (AG.LND.IRIG.AG.ZS) · World Bank World Development Indicators (2026 (data 1990-2023))
  37. Arable land (hectares) (AG.LND.ARBL.HA) and Population, total (SP.POP.TOTL) · World Bank World Development Indicators (2026 (data 2000-2024))
  38. Bankalarin tarima kredi destegi 700 milyar liraya yaklasti · Anadolu Agency (AA) (2024)
  39. GAP'ta 634.000 ha alan sulamaya acildi (GAP Regional Development Administration data) · Su Politikalari Dernegi (Water Policies Association) (2024 (data through end-2022, with 2023-24 figures corroborated separately))
  40. Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, value added (% of GDP) (NV.AGR.TOTL.ZS) · World Bank World Development Indicators (2026 (data 2023-2025))

What we could not measure

No nationally representative child growth survey has been conducted since 2018, so Turkey's 6.0 per cent stunting reading is eight years old. Foreign-exchange reserves in months of import cover are not published for 2025 or 2026 at primary quality; secondary aggregators put the range anywhere from about 1.3 to 5.7 months, so the score falls back on the World Bank's 2024 figure (4.73 months). No dedicated strategic protein or feed reserve is disclosed, and grain stock cover is inferred from USDA estimates rather than a published national mandate.

Published August 2026 ·How scores are produced