Turkey’s economy takes another hit as protests rock the country
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
From the BBC World Service: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival — Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul — was due to be named as a nominee for the 2028 presidential election. Now, tens of thousands are protesting his detention on corruption charges as Turkey’s economic struggles continue. We’ll learn more about the situation. Also: Could tariffs under U.S. President Donald Trump provide an opportunity for Chile’s salmon farmers?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Turkey's economy takes another hit as fierce protests rock the country. |
| 0:06.8 | Live from the BBC World Service, this is the Marketplace Morning Report. |
| 0:10.6 | I'm Luke Wilson in Fuliana Byrne. Good morning. |
| 0:17.3 | Protesters and police have clashed in Turkey on a fifth night of demonstrations after the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamolu, was arrested and charged with corruption. |
| 0:27.2 | Mr Amamoglu is the main political rival to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government appears to be more and more concerned about the impact of the unrest on the economy. |
| 0:38.4 | Our business correspondent Nick Marsh joins me now. Hi Nick. |
| 0:42.0 | Hi, Luke. Just remind us, what is Turkey's situation economically like? |
| 0:47.6 | Yeah, well, Turkey's seen some pretty bad economic mismanagement for the past four, five years now. It's mainly to do with really |
| 0:57.2 | crippling inflation. While the majority of the rest of the world was dealing with this rising |
| 1:03.5 | global inflation, President Erdogan insisted that Turkey's central bank actually decrease interest rates, which is unorthodox, to say the |
| 1:13.8 | least. It baffled economists, and it led to this unbelievable level of inflation that we've seen |
| 1:18.9 | in Turkey. We're talking about 70% at one point. The value of the Turkish lira also plummeted, |
| 1:25.6 | which meant that imports, things like energy became incredibly |
| 1:29.4 | expensive. Money started pouring out of the country. So if you're looking at this public anger |
| 1:37.1 | we've been seeing on the streets in Turkey at maybe why Ekram Imammolu's popularity has been increasing over the past couple of years. |
| 1:47.9 | This is the overall economic picture. This is the context that we've been seeing. |
| 1:52.6 | And has there been any economic reaction, markets, currency, things like that to these latest |
| 1:57.8 | developments over the past week? This morning, Monday morning in Turkey, we saw a small |
| 2:04.0 | increase in the value of shares in Turkey's stock market. That's a small recouping of pretty |
| 2:11.3 | dramatic losses that we saw last week after the initial detention on Wednesday. Markets tumbled as much as 7, 8%. The Turkish |
| 2:21.6 | Central Bank had to scramble to try and protect the lira on Friday. It spent nearly $12 billion |
| 2:27.7 | to try and preserve its value. They've banned things like short selling. They've relaxed share |
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