Nobody wants to have a long-term relationship with the Turkish lira these days. On Aug. 6, the lira lost nearly 6% of its value against the US dollar, going from 5.10 to a low of 5.42 — its worst performance in 10 years. Since Jan. 1, the lira has depreciated 27% against the dollar and 35% against the euro. After the brief spike of 5.42 to the dollar around 11:30 p.m. local time, the lira settled in the 5.20-5.30 range.

Oblivious to the realities of globalization, the possibility of buying and selling foreign currency online and the fact that financial markets in other time zones continue to operate when Turkish markets close, many Turks on social media expressed curiosity why their money would continue to lose value after 5 p.m. (Each day, anywhere between $3 trillion to $5 trillion worth of currency is exchanged around the world.) Turkey’s pro-government media outlets blamed the “global foreign exchange lobby,” but nobody asked how Turkey’s economy and currency could be so vulnerable to speculators. Afflicted with like-minded conspiracy theories and unwilling to risk the government’s accusations of betrayal, few opposition figures and media outlets were willing to challenge the “foreign lobby” line.

The apparent cause for Turkey’s economic vulnerability is the sanctions that the US government imposed on two Turkish cabinet ministers in the wake of American pastor Andrew Brunson’s continued imprisonment in Turkey. (After being held in pretrial detention since October 2016, a Turkish court placed Brunson under house arrest on July 25.) The Donald Trump administration’s inclusion of Turkey into its trade wars with China and the European Union and Ankara signaling that it will not join Washington’s impending sanctions against Iran make it seem like the Turkish lira’s problems are political.

In fact, the reasons for the Turkish currency’s meltdown are more complicated. At the crux of the problem lie the Turkish government’s habitual interference in the economy and the private sector’s wrong-headed growth strategies. For years, the government extended lucrative guarantees for private companies in a frenzy to build signature development projects — highways, bridges, airports, power plants and residential and commercial buildings.