THE MAKING OF THE TURKISH FINANCIAL CRISIS

Yılmaz AKYÜZ (UNCTAD)
Korkut BORATAV (Ankara University)

There can be little doubt that at the turn of the century the Turkish economy was in need of an urgent stabilization in order to halt a treacherous process of high and volatile inflation, unsustainable public debt accumulation, and increasing financial fragility, resulting from irresponsible policies and lack of fiscal discipline that had been endemic under various governments since the early 1980s. However, the stabilization program formulated and launched with strong support from the IMF failed to deliver its promises, plunging the economy into an unprecedented crisis, in large part because of serious shortcomings in its design as well as in crisis intervention which appears to have drawn no useful lessons from the recent bouts of crises in emerging markets.