Turkey’s clothing and textile industry — the most crucial branch of the country’s economy in terms of production, exports and employment — has emerged as the worst-hit industrial sector in the coronavirus pandemic, with no apparent prospects of a quick recovery.

Industrial production data, released by the Turkish Statistical Institute last week, shows that clothing and textile production in March, when the coronavirus officially reached Turkey, shrank respectively 20% and 14% from February, while the overall decline in the manufacturing industry stood at 7.5%. The downtick has apparently continued since then and the outlook reportedly remains far from promising for June.

Clothing and textiles have been among the first items that households forego during the pandemic, resulting in some of the sharpest slumps in consumer demand globally and raising the specter of unemployment for hundreds of thousands of workers in the sector, especially in Asia. The entire global chain, from cotton and fiber suppliers to retail shops, has been affected.

Turkey’s clothing and textile industry — one of the country’s most deep-rooted manufacturing branches — has drawn both on domestic demand from an 83-million population and foreign demand, mainly from Europe, to thrive and grow into a heavyweight in the Turkish economy. For years, Turkey has ranked among leading producers in the global apparel and textile sector, where manufacturing has concentrated in emerging economies, mostly in Asia, while wealthy developed nations are the main consumers. China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh are the top producers today. Turkey is the world’s sixth-largest exporter of textiles and the eighth-largest exporter of ready-to-wear. In the European Union market, Turkey ranks third in terms of ready-to-wear sales after China and Bangladesh, and second in terms of textiles after China.