Turkey unrest threatens its vital foreign cash
TURKEY : With few customers to serve, the moneychangers 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.
AFP
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