For many years, high public debt and macroeconomic mismanagement forced Turkey to pay a huge interest-rate premium in international financial markets – money that might have otherwise been invested in schools. However, since assuming office in 2003, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has reduced the fiscal deficit as a share of GDP by nearly ten percentage points, from 10.8% in 2002 to 1% in 2013, and cut the public debt/GDP ratio from 74% in 2002 to 36.3% in 2013.