What’s in store for Turkish economy after local polls?
Once Turkey’s March 31 local elections are over, Ankara is expected to focus on restoring the confidence of foreign investors — an uphill task that will require bitter pills to redress economic balances.
In Turkey’s municipal polls on Sunday, voters will not only decide who runs town halls, they will also show how willing they are to punish the ruling party for a bruising economic crisis that is fueling price rises and unemployment. The economic turbulence began shortly after the presidential and parliamentary elections in June 2018, keeping President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government busy in the second half of the year and causing it to stagger in the run-up to the local polls.
Sunday’s vote will remove the electoral pressure on Ankara, easing its hand in drawing a road map to tackle the crisis. The economic scenarios for April have thus become a top subject of discussion.
In fact, a road map is already in place. In September, the government released its medium-term economic program, officially called the New Economic Program, setting an array of recovery targets. Yet, under the pressure of looming elections, the program was effectively shelved, giving way to populist measures designed to minimize the impact of the crisis on the electorate, soothe popular anger and put a temporary dressing on economic scars. As a result, April — or the elections aftermath — has become synonymous with a new beginning for economic policy.
Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak — made the top man of the economy by Erdogan, his father-in-law — has also said that April will be a period of fine-tuning economic policies, with “all steps” taken in coordination with the president.
