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July 28, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 9
Poland, Turkey stocks soar, Russia takes a bath
Ben Aris in Berlin
Poland and Turkey’s stock markets are soar- ing, up 38% and 35% respectively, making them the best performing markets in the MSCI EM universe. But Russia is in its traditional place of worst performing market YTD, down 15%.
The result is somewhat surprising as all three markets are wracked by political turmoil, but portfolio investors don’t seem to care. Poland saw massive street demonstrations at the week- end as the ruling PiS party tried to ram through illiberal reforms that would give it political con- trol of the courts. Due to the size of the popular protests the president vetoed two of three con- tested bills at the last moment.
Likewise, this month hundreds of thousands of people marched on the capital Ankara in one of the biggest popular protests in the region for years. A week later, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan struck back with an equally big
pro-government rally on the anniversary of the attempted coup. The Turkish government then prolonged a state of emergency for another three months that has effectively suspended the rule of law and continued Erdogan’s epic purge that has seen hundreds of thousands of people sacked from their public jobs from across the spectrum.
Russia is in no better state and if anything the opposition movement is far more muted hav- ing been cowed by increasingly repressive laws. Nevertheless, anti-corruption blogger and op- position leader Alexei Navalny managed to get thousands of young protesters onto the street in regional cities across the country this summer in an impressive show of defiance. In the latest infraction on civil liberties, film has emerged of these protests with face-recognition technology that identifies participants and their fami-
lies. To add to the Kremlin’s woes, the US