The Official Statistical Agency of Turkey (TUIK), which has been routinely coming out with creative reconfigurations of its methods of calculation of essential data, introduced its latest innovation Jan. 25 with changes it made to the "inflation basket."

In December 2016, the TUIK had altered the national income calculation method, which increased, on paper, national per capita income from $9,130 to above $11,000 overnight; this became a topic of bitter humor.

The reliability of the TUIK, whose calculation methods have been questioned, particularly when calculating unemployment, the numbers of tourists and tourism revenues, is now being challenged by its reconfiguration of the "inflation basket" with new indexed weights of items.

Inflation reached 8.53%, exceeding 2016 predictions by 1.5 percentage points, and seemed likely to reach double-digit numbers this year. That now may not happen because of the changes in the basket, as the weights of major components such as food, nonalcoholic beverages, clothing, housing, health, and electricity and natural gas were all reduced.