I doubt public knows how much debt we have towards china
Do we have a number?
Looking at:
datatopics.worldbank.org
Bilateral loans (in total not just China) make up 7.5/440 or around 2% of total foreign debt principal held by Turkey (as of 2019).
Rest would need a study of how much Chinese prevalence there is in commercial banks, private loans, bonds, AIIB and all that kind of thing.
But all those have only so much transmittance/control from CCP/PRC govt itself compared to hard bilateral loan...which Turkey at you can see has minimal exposure to overall.
The big trend I see (of significance) is the overall reduction of FDI and increase in loan to replace it (thus reducing overall quality of capital inflow to Turkey substantially) since 07/08
This is a AKP/Erdogan driven phenomenon, policy, response etc. largely....I feel Erdogan admin is not pragmatic or professional enough and too typically hot-headed political. This is not good for larger country long term. I believe I have already talked about the increase in short term bonds/loans is also not good...along with non-guaranteed private credit and bonds in general....the large risk here is all bourne by Turkey (esp Turkish taxpayer) in the end.
Looking at FDI (much higher quality then loans as the risk is leveraged on the investor side):
santandertrade.com
EU is by far the largest investor there in Turkey....China is really not in the picture yet...and I doubt it will be.
Erdogan doesn't have that much real pressure being exerted by CCP imo....but maybe Turkish establishment feels it prudent to keep geopolitics options open given the tense climate in the region and the frictions heating up increasingly. PRC has less baggage on certain (directly accessible hard power) matters, but of course carries lot of "soft power" baggage other way w.r.t Turkey (w.r.t uighurs, kazaks etc and Turkey connection to them by Turkic lineage).
It in the end is how much transmittance there is between Turkish power corridors that are more influence by hard power issues compared to Turkish society that are more influenced in day to day by soft power.
Turkey need better mature internal politics from what I have seen so far, things are too polarised for comfort with Erdogan vs rest...when Turkey cannot afford this in coming decades given its neighbourhood and also larger world changes.
BTW If you or mods feel this convo is bit too serious for tea, we can look to move it to turkish economy thread or something I guess.
@xenon5434 @Sinan @anmdt @T-123456 @Webslave @Test7 et al.