Customs watch: methodology

Version 2 (1 November 2026). Customs watch is computed again whenever a statistics office releases new figures, once they have all arrived; each computation replaces the one before and is kept on record.

What it shows

For each market and product group (four-digit HS heading) of the goods Turkish companies on Birlesa make: how much the market imports month by month, how fast its imports grow, where they come from, how much of them come from Türkiye, and whether the market looks open to Turkish suppliers.

Where the figures come from

Official statistics only, as each office publishes them, never company shipment records: Eurostat's Comext database (dataset DS-059341), whose figures Eurostat lets a business reuse with the source acknowledged; and, on the owner's statement of 31 October 2026 that every organisation on the permissions list granted us permission, UN Comtrade (Saudi Arabia's and the United States' own declarations, in US dollars), Qatar's National Planning Council (in Qatari riyals) and the United Kingdom's HMRC (by country of consignment, which the pages say).
The markets with their own figures: the 27 EU member states, Norway and Iceland, and the EU's official candidate countries that report to Eurostat (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine); Saudi Arabia and the United States for the headings UN Comtrade has been read for; Qatar; the United Kingdom. Switzerland's and Liechtenstein's figures may not be reused commercially.
Each market and heading gets the best basis there is. The market's own figures where they hold the heading's last twelve months; otherwise a mirror: what Türkiye reports it exported there (Türkiye's own figures, as TÜİK sends them to Eurostat). So a market whose source has been read for some headings only (UN Comtrade's Saudi Arabia, while its headings are being read) has its own figures for those and mirrors for the rest, and a heading the market's own source read for every month of the year and found no imports of keeps the market's word: no series. A mirror is labelled as such. It has no total of the market's imports, so no share and no "open" verdict.
The products: 413 headings, those of which Türkiye exported at least 50 million euros in 2025 and which fall in one of the site's goods sectors (86% of Türkiye's exports). Arms and ammunition are left out.
Values are in the currency the office publishes (euros for Eurostat), never converted.

How a market's imports are counted

An EU member state: its imports from outside the EU, by country of origin. Inside the EU a member state records the member state goods were sent from, not where they were made, so a partner inside the EU is not an origin (Dutch ports would otherwise look like makers of Chinese goods). This is also where a Turkish supplier competes: with the other countries outside the EU.
Any other market: its imports from the whole world.
A month the market reported with no trade in the heading counts as zero. A month it did not report is left empty and never guessed.

The figures

Imports over twelve months: the sum of the market's last twelve reported months, and the same for the twelve before. Each needs all twelve months.
Growth: the last twelve months over the twelve before, minus one (+20% means a fifth more).
Added demand: the last twelve months minus the twelve before, in the currency.
Main origins: the five largest countries of origin of the last twelve months, each with its share of the market's imports.
Türkiye's share: imports from Türkiye over the market's imports, for the last twelve months and the twelve before, and the change between them in points.
Türkiye against China, India and Egypt (the comparison the customs brief asks for): the twelve months, share and place among every country that supplied the heading, for Türkiye and for each of the three that supplied any, and how many countries supplied it.
Each series shows the last 36 months, ending with the market's newest month; the newest month is named with every figure.

Open market

A market is open for a heading when all of these hold:

Complete: the market reported all of the last 24 months.
Fresh: its newest month is at most three months behind the newest month of any market; at most nine for a market whose figures reach us later by design: Saudi Arabia's through UN Comtrade (its April 2026 was released on 30 July, four months behind Eurostat's newest) and Qatar's from its National Planning Council (it adds months a few times a year: January and February 2026 came in August). Further behind, a market has stopped reporting, as Ukraine has (September 2025).
Large enough: at least 1,000,000 of imports over the last twelve months, in the office's currency (euros or US dollars); in Qatari riyals at the riyal's fixed rate to the dollar, 3.64 (Qatar Central Bank), so 3,640,000 riyals.
Growing: imports grew by at least 10% over the twelve months before.
Türkiye is small there: Türkiye's share of the last twelve months is below 10%.

Every series that is not open says which conditions it misses. Open markets are listed first, the largest added demand first: where the year brought the most new buying that Türkiye does not yet supply.

What the lists suggest

The lists, and the counts beside the sectors and regions, suggest only goods Türkiye really exports. A heading is suggested when all of these hold:

Türkiye exports it: at least 50,000,000 euros of Türkiye's exports of the heading in the newest year of its export figures (Eurostat Comext, Türkiye's own figures, its six-digit subheadings added up; today 2025).
Türkiye sells it in the markets with figures: Türkiye's share of the combined imports of the heading of all the markets with their own figures, over the last twelve months, is at least 1%.
It is goods a maker sells: precious metals unwrought, as powder or as waste, and coins (headings 7106, 7108, 7110, 7112, 7118) are refining and investment flows and are never suggested.

Measured on 2026-10-31 over the figures up to August 2026: every heading of customs watch passes the first condition (gold, 7108, alone was exported for 2.7 billion euros), so the second does the work. Computers (8471) are at 0.02%, phones (8517) 0.05%, vaccines (3002) 0.20% and aircraft (8802) 0.53%, against olive oil (1509) 1.02%, towels (6302) 12% and hazelnuts (0802) 12%. Gold passes the second condition at 1.19% and is left out by the third. The rule keeps 378 of the 413 headings and 2,462 of the 2,847 open series. A series it does not suggest keeps its own page.

The Gulf, Iraq and Africa

These markets publish no import figures customs watch may use, so they are listed apart, by Türkiye's own exports to them (the mirror above), always labelled as such:

The Gulf: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. Iraq. Africa: the 54 countries of the continent.
A market and heading is listed when Türkiye's exports there over the last twelve months were at least 1,000,000 euros and grew by at least 10% over the twelve months before, Türkiye's largest exports first; only headings the rule above suggests.
This is not the open-market rule: a mirror has no total of the market's imports, so it has no share of Türkiye and no "open" verdict. Türkiye's exports are never shown as the market's imports.

Credit

Every figure is shown with its source's credit as its licence asks. For Eurostat: "Source: Eurostat, Comext DS-059341. Growth rates and shares are calculated by Birlesa from Eurostat's figures; Eurostat bears no responsibility for them."

Limits

Statistics describe what crossed a border, not who bought it: they show where demand is, not the buyer.
Offices revise recent months as late declarations arrive; Eurostat's figures are final in the October after the year they describe. Customs watch reads recent months again after each release.
A heading groups many products: a market can grow in one product of the heading and shrink in another.
Confidential trade is hidden by the offices in the detailed figures, so a heading's partners may not add up to its total.
A mirror shows only what Türkiye sent, not what the market bought from others.

Changes to this method

Any change gets a new version number, is described here, and applies from the next computation; the version is part of every answer of the API (methodology).

2026-10-31: the lists suggest only goods Türkiye really exports, and the Gulf, Iraq and Africa have lists of their own (both above). Neither changes how a series is computed or when a market is open, so the version stays 1.
2026-11-01, version 2: each market and heading gets the best basis there is (above): before, a market read by UN Comtrade for some headings lost every mirror, and Saudi Arabia's code by country pages fell from 138 to 13. A market whose figures reach us later by design may be nine months behind and still be fresh, so Saudi Arabia's and Qatar's own figures can find open markets (the plan's "Saudi towel imports +20%, Türkiye 8%"); the size floor in Qatari riyals is at the riyal's peg; Türkiye's place against China, India and Egypt is kept with each series.