ISTANBUL: With few customers to serve, the money changers near Istanbul’s Taksim Square jabber in annoyance behind their glass partition.
Their volume of business has dropped 70 percent since mass protests broke out against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over a week ago.
“Everyone’s going to get affected. The banks. The stock market. The workers will suffer, and the bosses,” says one of the staff, Sahin Ozcetinkaya, 53. “No country’s economy will ever develop with chaos.”
And it is not just his customers — mostly tourists — that are taking fright from days of tear gas and water cannon here at the heart of Turkey’s powerful economy.
The Istanbul stock market plunged last week and analysts warn that the foreign financing that has fuelled an economic spurt during Erdogan’s decade in office could diminish too.
Turkey is “dependent on foreign capital to finance investment”, wrote Neal Shearing, an analyst at Capital Economics in London.
With thousands angrily accusing Erdogan of authoritarianism in pushing conservative social reforms, “the risk now is that a renewed period of political uncertainty dents confidence and causes investment flows to reverse”.
Victor in three elections in a row, Erdogan has overseen strong economic growth — an average five percent a year since he first won office in 2002.
He also brought stability to Turkey after decades of turbulent party politics and a string of coups from the 1960s, — although critics say this has been partly achieved by jailing hundreds of military officers.
The mostly young, middle-class protesters now yelling in the street for him to resign complain not about the economy but what they call Erdogan’s authoritarian style.
Erdogan has blamed his troubles on various groups of outsiders — unnamed agitators and “terrorists”, plus what he calls an “interest rate lobby” of speculators pushing for high returns.
“Dear brothers, we have come this far by building, producing and strengthening Turkey... We have come this far despite the interest rate lobby,” Erdogan said on Friday. “They think they can threaten us by speculating in the market. They should know we will not let them feed on the sweat of this nation.”
After Erdogan’s defiant speech on Thursday, the rate of return on Turkey’s benchmark government bond shot up from 6.2 percent to reach 6.9 percent early on Friday — making it more expensive for his government to borrow money.
AFP
