Resilience, the Rivet Effect, and the Changing Geography of Production Chains in the Turkish Automotive Industry

Abstract

This article focuses on the Turkish automotive industry and examines the sector's resilience using secondary data. The empirical investigation is based on the concept of the rivet effect and its impact on firm survival within the first tier supply chain of local original equipment manufacturers that operate in the Marmara region. This region is considered the industrial heartland of the Turkish economy and is an example of a mega-city region comprising multiple clusters: Bursa, Istanbul, Kocaeli, and Sakarya. The study findings indicate a spatially uneven impact of the rivet hypothesis in the region. From the perspective of economic geography and regional planning, it is clear that these co-located automotive clusters differ from each other not only with respect to production organization, size, and historical evolution, but also with reference to the density and spatial composition of their supplier-customer linkages.