Turkey’s prime minister Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey could be among the top ten economies in the world by 2023. Turkey would achieve this by investing in education and research and development. While no doubt these are good policies for increasing production Erdogan is being rather optimistic. According to rankings at this site Turkey is now 17th in the world. The site includes in the ranking the entire EU which is number one as well as individual countries in the union, otherwise the United States would be number one. Projections are made for several years into the future but from what I saw Turkey would remain at the same ranking. This is not because Turkey would not grow at a good pace but because other countries did as well. China would come much closer to the U.S. and India would increase its ranking.During a ceremony in Bogazici University in Istanbul Erdogan said:”We cannot achieve this goal by only monitoring or copying developments,” He also claimed that Turkey was in the third place among world economies in regard to growth, and the first in Europe.At present, the EU is the largest economy but the United States is largest for one country. After the U.S. come China, Japan, India, Germany, Russia, UK and France. At present Turkey is at 17 even behind Canada at 15th. It would seem Erdogan is being a bit optimistic about economic growth. But then what politician isn’t!