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A Wild Trip Through Turkey
Turkey kept rates on hold Thursday which, to the uninitiated, probably doesn't sound like news.
But it is. News, I mean. And even if it wasn't, I'm overdue for a trip through recent events in Turkey.
The country is grappling with another one of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's regularly scheduled currency crises, but unlike some of the more harrowing such episodes witnessed over the past five years, the lira's most recent bout of depreciation is more slow-motion train wreck than uncontrolled dive.
The
I’ve been involved with Turkey pretty continuously since 1969, so this is the 3rd or 4th time I’ve seen this movie. Erdo has forgotten that these are the economic circumstances that brought AKP to power 20 years ago. Or maybe he believes he’s tamed the military and is invulnerable.
In my opinion — and with sincere apologies to everyone in Turkey for whom his never-ending tenure is a disaster — he’s no idiot. He’s extricated himself from more vexing situations than I thought possible, and somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, he’s managed to preserve a tiny shred of legitimacy among Western leaders. He’s not viewed through the same lens as Putin or Xi, or even Orban. And he does have a lot of legitimate (depending on your definition of “legitimate”) domestic support. I’ve only been following Erdogan closely for ~9 years (which sounds like a lot to most readers, but as you probably know, it’s actually quite a short timeframe in this context), but I’m continually “impressed” with his capacity to come out unscathed, where “impressed” is obviously a misnomer I use only because I don’t really have a more politically correct adjective.
H- Can’t disagree. He’s beaten the odds so far. He is not a dope. But the economic pain for even his most populist supporters has to become unbearable sometime. The deposit guarantee scheme he cooked up a few months ago is bound to blow up.