Daily Times

Turkey’s inflation slowed in November for the first time since May 2021, official data showed on Monday, delivering a boost to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of next year’s election. The rate slowed to 84.39 percent, according to state statistics agency TUIK, down from 85.51 percent in October. Turkey’s inflation has risen steadily since reaching a low of 16.6 percent in May 2021. The emerging market’s troubled economy has turned into a major stumbling block on Erdogan’s path to a third decade in power in a presidential poll due by next June. Erdogan’s approval rating began to suffer when he set off on an unusual economic experiment last year that tried to bring down chronically high consumer prices by lowering borrowing costs. Conventional economic theory embraced by almost every other big nation pursues the exact opposite approach. Turkey’s lira began to drop in value almost immediately, as consumers rushed to buy up dollars and gold to try and protect their savings. The price of imports such as oil and gas soared, creating an inflationary spiral that the nominally independent central bank fed further by continuing to lower interest rates. Erdogan has maintained that his unwavering focus on economic growth at all costs — achieved through cheap lending and state support — will eventually pay off. “We will witness the rapid descent of inflation soon and we will see together that the dirty scenarios built on this trouble are torn and thrown away,” he repeated over the weekend.