​Closed for Business through 16 May

TURKEY - In Brief 27 Apr 2021 by Atilla Yesilada

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Hours after we sent our weekly Covid-19 Update to editors,President Erdogan declared a national lockdown from 7 pm Thursday (29 April) though 5 am Monday, 17 May.His goal is to reduce daily cases from 38K to 5K and rescue the critical tourism season.While the lockdown is almost certain to drastically reduce nation-wide transmission, it needs to be reversed carefully and followed up by a very rapid vaccination campaign to do the economy any good. The lockdown is called “total” but there are too many exceptions. For instance, manufacturing facilities are open, which indicates that preserving economic output remains as important as public health to the President. More ironically, construction operations, too, are exempt.These, as well as numerous other exemption will somewhat mitigate the effectiveness of the lockdown. I am fairly sure at the end case numbers will decline rapidly, but at the end of the lockdown the prevalence will be high enough to carry the seeds of yet another wave. Needless to say, economic activity; in particular in services, automotive, real estate and electronic-household goods ought to take a major hit, because in Turkey these goods are still purchased after on-site visits to galleries. My primary objective in this Market Brief is not to analyze the economic cost in detail, but suffice to say that Erdogan will either have to increase social spending and cash aid to S&ME substantially, or watch his poll ratings decline even faster. My objective is to assess whether Tukey can successfully tame the outbreak simply by locking the nation down. The answer is, of course, fairly obvious. No, not unless sufficient number of people are vaccinated for the soc...