Foreign investors ready to withdraw from Turkey if “nightmare of 2018” repeats

Things are not looking bright for Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman aspirations

Turkey suffered a nightmare in its economy in 2018 and if the same problems repeat in 2019, foreign investors will withdraw their investments, said economists attending a summit in the northwestern province of Bursa, opposition Sozcu newspaper reported on Saturday.

The foreign investors demanded credible policies at the eighth Uludag Economic Summit organized by Capital and Economist magazines with the participation of some 2,000 economic experts from Turkey and abroad.

“We do not want to live 2018 again. As foreign investors, I can say that 2018 was a nightmare,” said Timothy Ash, a strategist at BlueBay Asset Management in London.

The Turkish lira hit record lows last year in August, following a diplomatic row between Ankara and Washington over the almost two-year detention of an American pastor and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s unorthodox economic policy that undermined the central bank’s independence.

The Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak has repeatedly said the exchange rate volatility the country witnessed last year was the result of a foreign attack.

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