Turkey's Economy Is Crashing

Ayla Jean Yackley, Foreign Relations: Turkey’s Losing Economic War

Ankara blames Washington for its financial troubles, but it is fighting the wrong enemy.

Harun Macit is one of the lucky few in Turkey. He builds sports facilities and sells equipment overseas, earning hard currency to comfortably pay his foreign loans. Other companies, with revenue and assets held mainly in the local currency, have watched their debt loads mushroom as the Turkish lira’s value has fallen by almost a third this month alone.

The lira’s meltdown has eroded banks’ capital and threatens a wave of bankruptcies. The crisis has spread beyond Turkey, infecting other emerging markets and dragging down stocks in London and New York. And it has poisoned Ankara’s relationship with Washington, which it blames for fomenting the chaos in an “underhanded plot,” as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called it, to bring the country to heel.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: This problem was long in the making, and long before President Trump was thinking of running for the Presidency. After spending almost a trillion dollars in the past decade to fuel a construction boom, coupled with massive borrowing elsewhere, the bill is coming in for the Turkish economy and government. This is not going to end well for Turkey, and with U.S. sanctions now in place, doubly so.