Turkey’s economy has improved, but its foreign policy is still messy

FOR MOST countries, a 10% drop in the currency’s dollar value in just over five months would be cause for alarm. For Turkey, it is a respite. After years of reckless lending and spending, the country’s new economic team, appointed after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s election victory in May, is putting the house in order. The central bank, which previously stoked inflation with cheap money, has raised interest rates by a whopping 31.5 percentage points since June. Economic growth has dipped as a result, but the inflation forecast has improved. Prices in November were 62% higher than a year earlier, but the monthly inflation rate has been falling, from a white-hot 9% in July and August to somewhat over 3% in recent months. The Turkish lira, which lost nearly 30% against the dollar in the first half of the year, continues to depreciate, but much more slowly.