Turkey’s self-styled economy policy: an expensive lesson

“Turkey is not such a rich country to take an economy lesson that is so expensive,” said economist Uğur Gürses in his most recent article published on Duvar English. Gürses noted that while it’s “painful” to see comments about the Central Bank raising interest rates while the exchange rates are at a record high. Gürses states that the signs were there six years ago when Moody’s downgraded Turkey’s outlook to negative. Below are excerpts from the article.

So-called “perception operations“

Albayrak said, “We do not care and we will not care if some people upgrade or downgrade ratings. We will continue growing as a country and maintain our stance. Thank God, we are aware of this game. Our economy is improving each day. We are aware of the perception operation.”

This rhetoric has continued up until this day: Certain powers are making perception operations; officials in the government are watching it. 

“Who cares?”

After Minister Albayrak said “Who cares,” he was the minister in charge of the economy in three of the four downgrades in the past four years. 

According to Moody’s credit rating scale, the latest downgrade shows that we are close to the bottom. If we drop two more places, then our grade will be “C,” which is the “highly speculative” category, very near default. 

If Moody’s rating drops and changes in the outlook had been taken seriously, then today the country would not be in this fall that is explained to the public as “the game of foreign powers.”

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