Turkey construction companies having reaped rewards from their go anywhere attitude are now paying a price for their risk, leaving unfinished projects behind in Libya after pulling workers out.

Unrest across the oil rich Arab world, a region that bought 22% of Turkey's total exports in 2010 will make construction firms more discriminating entering new business.

Coming from a fellow Muslim country that has deep rooted historical and cultural ties and whose government doesn't carry the baggage that Western governments do, Turkish firms have operated in the Arab world with a greater comfort level. According to Engineering News Record contractors’ survey, measured by order books for overseas projects, Turkey's construction sector overtook the United States' in 2010 to become the second largest after China's. Helped by a foreign policy aimed at winning friends and business, Turkish firms have gone aggressively into Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa, particularly North Africa.

Mr Ersin Takla chairman of Turkish chapter, Turkish Libyan Business Council said that "We are facing a risk which didn't exist before and now everybody is going to start separating their eggs in the basket."

Mr Erdal Eren head of Turkish Contractors Association said that "From Morocco to Egypt, Turkish firms are in the foreground compared to Western companies because they can take risks which Western companies cannot take. But the equation has changed.”

Mr Eren said that a period of instability has started in an important market for both construction and exports. Trade relations are going to lag for a while. We are worried in that sense.

As Libya descended into violence, Turkey mounted a mass air and sea evacuation operation to bring home most of some 20,000 Turks working there. One didn't come home alive. Ms Yunus Emre Celik was shot dead as he climbed a crane at a building site near Tripoli on February 22.

Mr Burcu Begde an employee of a construction firm which was building a university in Benghazi, spoke of the toll stress had taken among those who'd been evacuated from Libya. Ms Begde said that all of our colleagues are back from Libya, and physically they are fine but everybody is questioning their lives. I broke up with my fiancée. Other colleagues' relationships had suffered too but people were also worried about money and their jobs.

(Sourced from Reuters - Balkans.com)