Development of Mexican and Turkish Automotive Industries in Historical Perspective
Authors: Dolanay Sıtkı Selim 
Published: June 2024

Purpose: The purpose of our article is to examine the Mexican and Turkish automotive industries in a historical perspective, because a historical analysis will be able to show us why the automotive industries of the country we are considering are not among the world's leading automotive industries. Additionally, the course of historical data over time can also support the analysis.

Therotical Reference: For the first time, David (1985) put forward that it is necessary to examine the process of innovation of new products based on new technologies in a historical perspective, and David (2000, 2001) stated that the ergodic steady increase in production in sectors and industries depends on the sector or industry being able to create a unique development path. He stated that it was. He stated that the reason why there is no consistent ergodic production increase in sectors or industries is that it has a path-dependent development structure. According to David, path dependence may have been caused by an event or market formation that occurred in the recent or distant past.

Method: It has been revealed that a past event for the Turkish automotive industry caused the formation of a new socio-cultural structure, leading to a path-dependent development in more or less all sectors, but especially in the automotive sector. This path-dependent development structure seems to have caused an unstable production structure in the automotive industry. When we look at the efforts to produce domestic automobiles throughout history, it is understood that there is always a tendency to be hindered or to think that they are being prevented.

Results and Conclusions: Although there has not been a historical process similar to that in Turkey in the Mexican automotive industry, the fact that stable and ergodic production increases have been experienced in the industry, especially in the recent period, indicates that the automotive industry, which started as the assembly industry of foreign companies, has entered the process of creating a new path or creating a path with recent developments. We can say. In this process, it can be said that Mexico is a border neighbor with the USA and the investments of the three major automotive industry companies of the USA, which is one of the largest producing countries in the automotive industry, in Mexico, played a major role.

Implication of research: In reaching this conclusion, in our study, the automotive industry history of the countries we discussed were examined and the annual production figures in the automotive industry in the last decade were discussed. In examining whether there were developments in the past of the countries that could lead to path dependency, the breaking point where path dependency occurred in Turkey, in the Ottoman period, was clearly identified and it was revealed that the events that took place after this date strengthened the path dependency. Past historical events for Mexico were examined and events that could affect the development of the automotive industry were discussed.

Originality of article: Thus, we can say that, on the one hand, we tried to contribute to the literature and developments on the path dependency approach, which says that history is decisive, and on the other hand, a different perspective was brought to the developments in the automotive industry.