Letters from the Insane Asylum

TURKEY - In Brief 25 Mar 2025 by Atilla Yesilada

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Former president Suleiman Demirel once remarked “24 hours is a very long time in Turkish politics”, which wisely describes the bind the nation finds itself in. The rival camps are moving their pieces at dizzying speed like in a Blitz chess game. Since our last writing on Sunday night, there is a lot of old news, no-news, bad news and good news. The old news is that Sunday’s CHP preliminary attracted 14.5 million votes vs. the party’s membership of 1.7 million. Essentially, the nation told Erdogan to back down. The non-news involves CHP leader Ozel’s claim that Mehmet Simsek wants to resign. Simsek refuted this in an X post, while much more significantly, Erdogan rushed to hid aid. His comments are worthy a lengthy quote: “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged his commitment to the investor-friendly economy policies he embraced in 2023, blaming the opposition for market volatility spurred by the detention of his biggest rival. Erdogan stated that his institutions will ensure healthy market mechanisms and protect the gains made from the economy program implemented in the last two years”. In a different version of the Bloomberg article he added “Economic program to continue “without compromise”... Institutions have full authority to ensure healthy market functioning” (link here), which I interpret as CBRT having the mandate to hike rates if necessary, though in Turkey rhetoric rarely matches the reality. The worst news is a DA launching a probe into Ankara municipality on charges that it had overpaid organizers of public concerts. The investigation doesn’t directly involve mayor Mansur Yavas, Imamoglu’s backup for presidential nominee, but that’s how judicial tra...