Summary
Which banks earn wider net interest margins in Turkey, and does ownership change the mechanism? Using bank-level data covering the Turkish commercial banking sector from 2001 to 2012, this paper shows that operation diversity, credit risk, and operating costs are central determinants of margins.
More efficient banks exhibit lower margins, macro stability helps compress them, and several key determinants such as credit risk, size, market concentration, and inflation load differently across foreign-owned, state-controlled, and private banks. This page is summary-led because the paper's main contribution is a structured empirical decomposition rather than a single headline figure.