Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not seem all that bothered with the national currency plummeting. During his recent visit to Izmir, Turkey's long-time leader publicly vowed to continue supporting the nation by cutting interest rates.
The president delivered an emotional and memorable speech. He said that a plunge in the lira was the result of financial sabotage staged by “global barons of politics and money.” “These interest rates will come down. We will not let our people or our farmers be trampled by interest rates,” Erdogan addressed his supporters. “We’ll not give up our new economic program no matter what they do. They are trying to create a dark scenario using foreign exchange levels,” the leader said, adding that Turkey’s Central Bank expanded its foreign exchange reserves to $127 billion from $27.5 billion.
Erdogan sees interest rates as "an evil that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer". So, to stop prices from rising, interest rates should be lowered further. Such beliefs contradict the laws of economics, but Turkey lives by its own rules. Otherwise, these are foreign powers trying to undermine stability in the country. The Turkish president remains stubbornly on the course of interest rate cuts despite a tumbling lira. The country’s national currency lost half of its value in a year and hit its 20-year low of 13.21 versus the US dollar at the end of November.
