This study investigates the relevance of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in Turkey for the period 1974–2010 using carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, energy consumption, economic growth, and foreign direct investment (FDI) variables. The long-run equilibrium relationship among CO₂ emissions, energy consumption, economic growth, and FDI is revealed using the bounds test. The error correction model under autoregressive-distributed lag mechanism suggests that CO₂ emissions converge to their long-run equilibrium level by a 49.2% speed of adjustment every year by the contribution of energy consumption, economic growth, and FDI. The Toda–Yamamoto ( 1995 Toda, H.Y. , and T. Yamamoto. 1995. “Statistical Inference in Vector Autoregressions with Possibly Integrated Processes.” Journal of Econometrics 66 (1): 225–250. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] ) causality test results imply that carbon emissions and FDI, energy consumption, and CO₂ emissions have bidirectional causal relationships. On the other hand, there are unidirectional causal relationships running from economic growth and energy consumption to FDI and from economic growth to energy consumption. Our findings provide evidence of the validity of the pollution haven hypothesis, in addition to the scale effect, and the EKC in the case of Turkey.

Environmental Kuznets curve literature mostly uses a single indicator as a measure for environmental degradation. However, each single variable captures only a part of the environmental problem, and a reduction in any single measure does not indicate that the environmental problem is diminishing in general. Our study is the first one which investigates the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for the Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey (MINT) countries by employing the ecological footprint as the measure of environmental degradation. Autoregressive distributed lag results indicate that the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is valid for each of the MINT countries for the period of 1971–2013. The long-run coefficients of our augmented environmental Kuznets curve model show that fossil fuel energy consumption, exports, urbanization, and financial development are the most common causes of anthropogenic pressure on the environment. The effects of exports and imports are negative and positive on environmental degradation, respectively. The long-run coefficients of urbanization, financial development, and renewable energy consumption differ at certain levels for the sampled countries. The results of the analysis point to a number of different policy proposals for each country.