Finance & economics | Going for broke

Erdogan’s zany monetary experiment is impoverishing Turkey

The Turkish president is at war with the markets

|ISTANBUL

BY THE END of the month the only food Emer can prepare is plain pasta. Occasionally she goes to bed hungry. “I can’t even afford anchovies,” the retired nurse says outside a vegetable market in Maltepe, a middle-class neighbourhood in Istanbul. She and her two sons have to get by on her monthly pension of 3,000 lira, or about $250. Emer is behind on gas and electricity bills and loan payments. She is not alone. Soaring prices and a plummeting currency are turning the savings and incomes of most Turks to dust.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Going for broke”

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