Turkey sole Muslim country in peace: Deputy PM

“There is no stable and peaceful country of which the majority of the population is comprised of Muslims other than Turkey. There are, however, some people who want to destroy this stable environment [from the] inside… We need to be very careful,” he said on late May 24, at a business meeting in the Aegean province of Afyonkarahisar, as quoted by Doğan News Agency. 

Babacan stressed the importance of trust and political stability in the country for the development of capital markets in another meeting on May 25. 

“Macroeconomic stability can only be achieved through strong political stability,” he said, “We should always focus on how we can build trust in the long term,” he said at the 15th General Assembly meeting of the Turkish Capital Markets Association in Istanbul, as quoted by Anadolu Agency. 

He also said Turkey cannot build its economic growth model on the banking sector and it is now necessary for the country to flourish its capital markets.

“Capital markets have to be at the exact center of Turkey’s economic growth. A financial model in which the banking sector is at the center has lost its validity for Turkey,” Babacan said. “The faster our capital markets grow, the faster our economy will grow,” he added.