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2.0 Politics
2.1 Winter has come and Erdogan turned sharply...
This winter will be a long one in Turkey. Everyday normality in Turkey now means another u-turn by Erdogan.
Turkey has learned to live inside the economic abyss, though there are bone-chilling levels of poverty and repression that the curtain is rarely drawn back on.
Turkey is in serious “political turmoil” or undergoing a “massive shakeup”. To survive in the Turkish jungle, you have to learn to separate stories written by the Istanbul offices of Bloomberg and Reuters from stories written by Reuters and Bloomberg personnel abroad.
Turkey will come face to face with the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) sooner or later.
On November 10, Erdogan wrote a letter to Biden, stating that bilateral relations between Turkey and the US were of a "strategic" nature and should be further strengthened based on common interests.
The funniest story of the month was perhaps that Russia pursued a plan to “quickly” sell eurobonds before Biden takes over at the White House.
Erdogan might now be said to be performing super giant slaloms (Super-G) to differentiate himself from the Kremlin.
He fired a central bank governor who is a former director at Halkbank, the lender in hot water with US prosecutors for alleged Iran sanctions-busting.
His son-in-law and finance minister Berat Albayrak, who served as Erdogan’s right-hand man in various schemes, is of course also out.
Hakan Atilla, the former Halkbank director who did jail time in the US in the sanctions case, remains head of Borsa Istanbul, but he’s paid his penalty and has a clean nose at the moment.
No one, including Erdogan, has any idea as to what is next for Turkey.
All roads led to the City of London as the IMF option would mean that Erdogan
would face international courts due to exposition of his accounts.
Turkey as a whole, excepting a fortunate minority of its households, is facing an FX blackhole. Yes, it is a smart idea to move for households’ gold and FX savings ‘under the mattress’ to close the country’s short FX position. But no smart politician or servant of the system has yet come up with a fit-for-purpose plan to do this. With the current bunch in power, citizens are not exactly going to voluntarily queue up to avail themselves of state-blessed investment opportunities.
Erdogan should be congratulated if after everything he manages to keep stalling calls for snap elections.
6 TURKEY Country Report December 2020 www.intellinews.com
