Page 6 - TURKRptNov20

Meanwhile, Erdogan works overtime with his fireworks and dynamite show, tossing curdling invective at Western countries to distract the home audience from the lira’s collapse and provide the mainstream media and pundits with some specious reasons to explain it.
There is nobody who can be sure what Erdogan will do in the face of this currency emergency as he does not rely on any known criteria. He’s on a perfectly random walk.
Not only the economy but Turkey lacks any anchor while collapsing in all fronts from foreign policy to the health system.​A perfect storm is approaching.
2.2​ ​Corona scandals
Murat Emir, a lawmaker of the main Republican People’s Party (CHP), ​said that the Laboratories Information Management System data showed that nationwide on September 10 there were 29,377 positive coronavirus test results, out of a total of 107,702 tests administered. Yet on that day, Turkey officially recorded just 1,512 new COVID-19 cases.
Following Emir’s revelation, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca at his weekly news conference appeared to acknowledge that the government does not publish the full number of daily positive COVID-19 cases, but only cases in which the people concerned were symptomatic, Reuters reported. The number of daily new COVID-19 “patients,” which he defined as those who are symptomatic, was more important than the number of new “cases,” which includes those who do not show symptoms, he argued.
The UK on October 1 t​ook​the country off its travel corridor list.
The World Health Organization (WHO) ​urged​Turkey to report all cases of
coronavirus (COVID-19) in line with its guidance.
On October 26, Istanbul Medical Chamber executive board member Osman
Ozturk ​said​that the coronavirus outbreak was still ongoing at full pace.
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has taken a stark toll on the economy of Istanbul, Turkey’s commercial, cultural and financial capital and the epicentre of the virus outbreak in the country, according to a r​eport​by the municipality.
2.3​ ​Turkey's economic data compiled by loyal officials and “detached from reality” says ex stats chief
Turkish economic data are “detached from reality” with statistics officials picked for their loyalty to the Erdogan administration rather than merit, a former chief of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK, aka Turkstat) who’s now an opposition politician ​said.​
“When you tamper with data, you are treading the Greek path,” Birol Aydemir told Bloomberg in a phone interview, referencing the distorted accounting of Greek public finances that helped trigger the 2009 eurozone crisis.
Aydemir was cited as saying in a separate interview with the Sozcu daily that national recordings of growth, employment and inflation were all “dubious”.
bne IntelliNews has for more than three years periodically run stories on questions being raised about the reliability of Turkey’s official data. In
6​ TURKEY Country Report​ November 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com