Those behind the rise in the exchange rates, which has been experienced not only over the past couple of months but in the past five years, are “foreign powers.” Who are those foreign powers? They are the “foreign powers” that believed in our story in the first place and “bought this story,” bringing in a huge amount of capital. Savers, international investors of other countries and the central banks that had pumped cheap and a lot of money into the system are now withdrawing money. We had the “rosy picture” when the capital kept coming in and the “gray shades” when money exited.
As the Turkish Lira is sharply loosing value, “verbal maneuvers” have been made to buy some time. Each visit and meeting by the Central Bank chair feeds optimism, prompting people to try to draw positive conclusions.
As foreign exchange rates skyrocketed and concerns heightened due to higher interest rates caused by deteriorated expectations, an economy summit was held at the Beştepe Presidential Palace.
If the country’s currency lost more than 10 percent of its value over the past four months and half of this depreciation happened in the past month, and if the currency kept depreciating despite a rate hike — albeit insufficient — a central bank must have held an emergency meeting over the weekend.
There is confusion among cabinet ministers regarding how Turkey’s post-election economic outlook will look. Despite Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek saying it would be a period of a “leap forward” of reforms, the cabinet declared a controversial tax amnesty a couple of days ago.
Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek, who appeared on broadcaster NTV for an interview on April 30, just before Central Bank chair Murat Çekinkaya’s presentation on the latest inflation report, made some interesting comments.
The idea of borrowing and making payments in gold, which was first floated by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan back in 2016, is in circulation again.
If a curious person looks at the foreign exchange regime that was liberalized in 1989, which in turn paved the way for the free movement of capital, he or she can observe the following:
When Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli called for early elections in August last week, markets were tumbling. But on April 18 when the Turkish government officially announced early elections would be held on June 24, 17 months before the scheduled date, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ made a remarkable comment.
