The Turkish lira’s meltdown on Tuesday was a “train crash” long in the making caused by the unorthodox Islamist economic views of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Aykan Erdemir, senior program director for Turkey at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies (FDD) and a former opposition member of the Turkish parliament.
The free-fall in the lira has been caused by a series of policy mistakes that started during the term of former Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, who is Erdoğan’s son-in-law, Erdemir said in an interview on Tuesday for Ahval’s new podcast series ‘12 Minutes’. Albayrak resigned in November last year.