In this paper, the effect of the Syrian war on the export of SMEs in Hatay province, located on the Syrian border, is investigated and the role of KOSGEB (SME Development Organization of Turkey) is discussed. For the analysis companies were selected from Hatay. The examined population consists of 1176 exporting enterprises which does export and the sample size was 107 units. Furthermore, an attempt is made to identify the relevant factors causing problems for the SME’s, namely if their country of origin, area of activity, export-orientation and exportintensity was a distinctive factor.
Globally, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) have been recognized as pivotal contributors to the country’s economy. The main goal of this paper is to investigate country specific barriers to the internationalization process in SMEs in the transition country’s context. SMEs in transition countries deal with the common challenges that are usually occurred in other economies as well and they also have to overcome challenges of institutional external and internal barriers during their internationalization.
