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Adiyaman, head of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), said on August 30. “Ankara has become Wuhan,” Mustafa Cankurtaran, a geriatrics professor at
the Hacettepe medical faculty in Ankara, wrote on September 2 in a tweet.
Northern Cyprus, the de facto state that only receives flights from Turkey, has temporarily suspended all inbound flights due to a major rise in coronavirus (COVID-19) cases, AFP reported on September 10.
“The numbers of just one city, or the numbers unveiled by just one or two medical chambers are almost equal to the [official] numbers for the whole country,” doctor Halis Yerlikaya on September 20 t old Reuters at a hospital in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir.
2.3 Moody’s hits Turkey with downgrade to all-time lowest rating in unscheduled move
Moody's Investors Service has downgraded its rating on Turkey by one notch to B2, taking it to five notches below investment grade, while maintaining the Negative outlook, the rating agency said on September 11 in an unscheduled rating action.
Moody’s cited three key drivers for the downgrade:
1. Turkey's external vulnerabilities are increasingly likely to crystallise in a
balance of payments crisis.
2. As the risks to Turkey's credit profile increase, the country's institutions
appear to be unwilling or unable to effectively address these challenges. 3. Turkey's fiscal buffers are eroding.
The maintenance of the negative outlook reflects Moody’s view that fiscal metrics could deteriorate at a faster pace in the coming years.
It also reflects the downside risks associated with the authorities' inadequate reaction function, which makes Turkey more likely to suffer a full-blown balance of payments crisis in the coming years.
Finally, it reflects elevated levels of geopolitical risk on several fronts.
Moody's also lowered Turkey's foreign currency deposit ceiling by one notch to Caa1, two notches above default and seven notches below investment grade, from B3. The local-currency bond ceiling was also cut, taking it to Ba3 from Ba2.
The short-term foreign currency bond ceiling and short-term foreign currency deposit ceiling both remain unchanged at Not Prime (NP).
Ceilings generally act as the maximum ratings that can be assigned to a domestic issuer in Turkey, including for structured finance securities backed by Turkish receivables, Moody’s noted.
The alignment of the foreign currency bond ceiling and the government bond ratings reflects Moody's view that exposure to a single, common threat—loss of external confidence and capital—means that the fortunes of public and private sector entities in Turkey are, from a credit perspective, increasingly intertwined.
Moody's Investors Service has downgraded the ratings of 13 banks in
7 TURKEY Country Report October 2020 www.intellinews.com
