Turkey is recovering from a severe recession. Once growth gains full speed, the authorities will likely face the challenge of widening external imbalances and of ensuring a smooth functioning of the financial markets. The former will require improving competitiveness, raising domestic saving, attracting more FDI inflows and reducing energy import dependency. Improvements in many of these areas will depend on structural reforms in the labour and product markets. Financial market stability calls for adopting international standards of prudential regulations and reacting pre-emptively to new developments in the financial markets. Mitigating risks of macroeconomic instability will be crucial for embarking on a stable and strong growth path to generate sustainable convergence with the OECD average income level. This paper relates to the 2010 OECD Economic Review of Turkey (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/turkey).