Türkiye's Simsek Seeks to Calm Investors, Says Market Strains Will Be Managed, Sources Say

Asharq Al-Awsat

25-03-2025

Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek and Central Bank Governor Fatih Karahan told international investors on Tuesday that they would do whatever was needed to tame market turmoil triggered by the arrest of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's main political rival.
Police detained Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, Erdogan's main political rival, last Wednesday, and a court jailed him on Sunday pending trial on corruption charges, sparking Türkiye's biggest protests in more than a decade and a major market sell-off.
Simsek told investors he would not comment on judicial matters and the events of the last two weeks, but said there would be no lasting impact on the economy and that he intended to stay in his post, according to two sources on the call.
He also said there would be no change in approach to the economic turnaround program he introduced in mid-2023 when the country was in the midst of its most recent currency crisis.
"They steered almost completely clear of the political crisis," one participant on the call said.
A statement from the finance ministry after the call confirmed that Simsek had reiterated his view that there would be no lasting damage to the economy and that further measures would be taken if needed.
Central bank governor Fatih Karahan told the call that he sees the market turmoil as a temporary blip, one participant said. He also repeated something Simsek had said earlier, that Türkiye will do "whatever it takes" to tame inflation, two sources said.
Journalists were not invited to the call, but participants said Simsek added that the Treasury could reduce bond issuance as part of its response, and that it also had the option of so-called FX-linked bonds, that give buyers some protection against big currency swings.
The minister also said he expected Türkiye to benefit from better bilateral relations with the United States. Later on Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is to meet Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio in Washington.
Veteran emerging market analyst Tim Ash at fund manager BlueBay said the call, which also detailed how "offshore" investors had accounted for 60% of FX demand during last week's selloff, had been a "coordinated effort to engage with the international investment community, and re-assure."
REBOUND
Markets were continuing to stabilize after the call drew to a close with the Istanbul stock market finishing the day up 4.5% and the lira steady at just under 38 to the dollar.
The Borsa Istanbul ended last week down 16.6%, its worst drop since the peak of the global financial crisis in October 2008. The lira had dropped more than 10% at the height of the rout on Wednesday.
Tuesday's moves also saw the banking sub-index win back another 5.3%. It slumped more than 26% last week and has now recovered around 7.5% of that.
The Treasury, central bank, the BDDK banking watchdog and capital markets board had already held a series of meetings with market actors over the weekend and announced several steps.
The measures had begun with the central bank raising the upper band of the interest rate corridor by 2 points to 46% in an interim meeting last week, pausing funding from the policy rate.
While the central bank took a tightening step of close to 400 basis points, it also sold around $14 billion in foreign exchange. Additionally, it has started liquidity note issuance and TL-settled forward foreign exchange sales transactions.
The Turkish central bank's net FX position dropped by some $27 billion due to FX sales last week since Wednesday, according to bankers' calculations from the bank's balance sheet.
Short selling on the Istanbul stock market has been banned for one month.
Türkiye's international sovereign bonds were also continuing to claw back some of last week's losses, with the 2045 maturity up almost 1 cent on the dollar at 84.6 cents on the dollar, Tradeweb data showed, after falling more than 3 cents last week.
Türkiye's five-year credit default swaps, which investors often use as a hedge against turmoil, eased again too, ending the day back under 300 basis points according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, having spiked to almost 330 from 260 last week.
Turkish lira implied FX volatility gauges and risk reversals eased slightly, although they remained highly elevated, having soared to their highest levels since the country's last currency crisis in mid-2023, data from Fenics showed.
Ahead of Tuesday's investor call, Himanshu Porwal, EM analyst at Seaport Global had said that the markets had already been reacting positively to the measures taken to settle the markets in recent days.
"I think they (central bank, finance minister) have been doing what is required. FX is usually the first trigger you look at and so far the move has been contained, so I think people are coming to terms with it already," Porwal said.