Three Market Brief-“lets” in one: Table of Six, Halkbank case and natural gas from Russia

TURKEY - In Brief 03 Oct 2022 by Atilla Yesilada

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Depending on one’s predisposition towards living dangerously, waking up in Turkey could be a joyful occasion or a nightmare. There is certainly a lot going on, which I try to briefly analyze in this market brief. In a nutshell, the leaders’ summit of the main opposition alliance, Table of Six, underdelivered once again, but upped the ante on promises. The Supreme Court decided to hear Halkbank’s plea to have the sanctions violation trial dismissed. According to a late-breaking Bloomberg scoop, state-owned natural gas importer and grid operator BOTAS asked Gazprom to sell natural gas on credit. The six leaders of Table of Six (ToS) went to great pains to underline their unity of purpose and determination to field a joint presidential candidate in their post-summit declaration. To reinforce the message, six parties put out a video-advertorial with the motto “we shall win together”. On the full side of the glass, the message of unity ought to dispel most of the crisis and break-up fears. Additionally, new joint committees were formed to reflect a unified message on matters of concern to the public and to resolve disputes among constituents. Other committees will begin work on a common economic and foreign policy platform. Finally, leaders also agreed to craft a roadmap of how their president will deploy her executive powers and how to arrange and manage the transition from the current presidential to a parliamentary system. On the negative side, there is little in the declaration or post-summit commentary that will excite the nation and compel undecideds to flock to their camp. On Monday, CHP leader Kilicdaroglu stole the show once again in a twitter broadcast proposing l...