Turkish lira

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an on March 11 met with the government's economic pointman and the central bank governor, agreeing on the need to maintain trust in the economy at talks aimed at calming markets after a plunge in the value of the lira.
      

President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an is a very clever man. If this were not the case, he would not be where he is today. He therefore knows the relationship between cause and effect.

Do?an Holding has denied claims that it profits from the rise of the dollar exchange rate in Turkey, stressing that the latest hikes actually hurt it financially.

The corporation?s March 10 statement came after a number of newspapers accused the group of engaging in ?crisis-mongering? to profit from the dollar?s rise.

Turkey's Central Bank has taken a number of measures to defend the Turkish Lira, but did little to recover it off record lows, outweighed by a globally strong U.S. dollar and concerns about political actors' intervention in economic policy.

Turkey's Directorate General for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) has started to charge accommodation prices in the U.S. dollar to Turks performing the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, rather than the euro, amid the severe loss of the Turkish Lira against the former.

Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci has said he does not see a need for the Central Bank to intervene in the foreign-exchange market amid severe fluctuations in the markets.

The Central Bank should have cut interest rates before its monetary policy committee meeting in February, he said March 10 in comments during a televised interview.

The Turkish Central Bank said on March 9 it was cutting its one-week forex deposit interest rates, triggering gains in the lira after a week of sharp declines driven partly by worries over political pressure on the bank.

Yes, it is right that there was a huge turnout in the meetings Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu held in New York with finance circles.

?Highly illogical!? As a response to my latest column, a reader used Mr. Spock?s catchphrase to pay homage to Leonard Nimoy, who passed away on Feb. 27.

Turkish authorities have scrambled to stem the markets' rush to the U.S. dollar by issuing smoother statements about the Central Bank, after the Turkish Lira plunged to a series of historic lows.