TR Monitor
2026: Trump Rewinds the International Order
The repercussions of Trump’s direct interventionism will endure throughout the year. Everybody talk about Greenland, Denmark and NATO’s inner tensions, the division of the globe between the U.S., China and Russia etc. Accordingly, China will be driven...
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Nowhere is Safe Now
The event of the week was obviously Maduro’s capture but the accompanying statements by Trump attracted more attention. Accordingly, the U.S. will now “run” Venezuela for some time to come or until the “transition” is complete. Nobody knows how and for...
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The Decline of Reason against the Backdrop of Emergent Technology
TR MONITOR, ISSUE 439 27 December 2025 - 02 January 2026 “The decline of Reason and the decline of the individual are identical” Max Horkheimer Last week and before, I wrote about political possibilities and economic scenarios, early elections and so...
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The Shape of Things to Come
TR MONITOR, ISSUE 439 20-26 December 2025 The Economist is set to mark the global landscape on grounds of geopolitical conflict, trade zones, Trump’s likely destabilizing effect despite the possibility of an interim Democratic victory, and...
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One Year after Assad’s Fall Syria Still Locked in a Stalemate
Exactly a year ago I had commented in details on the fall of the Assad regime and claimed that Erdoğan was one of the big winners. While this is still true, Syria remains locked in a stalemate and the ‘Kurdish opening’, labelled “Türkiye without...
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Agents of Destiny
TR MONITOR, ISSUE 437 06-12 December 2025 Originally oikonomia meant “administration of the house”. And by way of extension, it has become the art of governing the commons. For Aristotle the techne oikonomike differs from politics just as the house...
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Strengths and Weaknesses of the Turkish Politico-Economic Landscape
The opposition thinks the majority of voters are unhappy. They think they will win next time because most of the people are poor and therefore automatically unhappy. It is true that you need at least a couple of thousand dollars after tax to have the...
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TR MONITOR, ISSUE 435 22 -28 November 2025
Prof. Dr. Gunduz Findikcioglu In 2026 nothing unexpected will happen. It is almost perfect foresight. All that could happen happened between December 2024 and December 2025. It all started juts before the fall of the Assad regime, like in October...
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Selective Incentives and Politico-Economic Change
Last week I suggested that important developments in domestic politics could be around the corner. Political change of sorts is possible because everything looks quiet on the economic front. Economically when you reach a smooth plane where visibility...
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Adaptive Preferences
When I was a graduate student, the famous ‘adaptive expectations versus rational expectations’ debate was already over. Well, it was in fact over a decade ago but we had heard that after the fact. In the late 80s, New Keynesianism was in vogue...
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Two Decisions and Three Political Scenarios
CBRT’s monetary policy decision isn’t easy to comment on, but it conforms the ‘baby steps’ hypothesis I have recently endorsed. The central bank isn’t committed to a drastic easing path but it will ease bit by bit if incoming data allow it. This is...
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Nearing the Climax
As we approach the decision on CHP’s fate, i.e. October 24, more and more journalists and analysts tend to believe the verdict will be against CHP. If so, this will be a strong blow to the current CHP administration. Slowly but surely Yavaş is also put...
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Democracy, Growth, Moderate inflation and all that
Democracy isn’t easy to characterize, i.e. to explain completely and rigorously. Clearly, modern democracies aren’t similar to the Greek democracy that existed in Athens some 2500 years ago or to the Italian city states’ republics of the 14th Century....
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Energy Politics, Green and Fossil, and Turkey’s Future
TR MONITOR, ISSUE 428 04 -10 October 2025 Many people believe that personal feelings have a bearing on international politics. There are indeed examples of that. For instance Hitler cherished Mussolini because he thought there was ideological...
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Can the Opposition Stay in Unison?
TR MONITOR, ISSUE 426 20-26 September 2025 The prospects are dimly lighted and stress is bound to gradually build up. “The Logic of Political Survival” is the title of an interesting book by four distinguished authors, among them Bruce Bruno de...
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Waiting for Godot
We are now bordering the absurd. Today Turkish politics is such an incredibly entangled web of plans, arrangements, extra-legal moves that bystanders can only look from afar and express their regrets. Crossing the Rubicon has become habit. Moreover,...
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Wuthering Heights
As expected, politics has again come to the forefront. Growth and inflation figures suggest there is no clear disinflation yet but also no clear sign of slowdown. AKP clearly thinks things are going well because there is some disinflation but there is...
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Winter Doesn’t Come Often
It is perhaps strange but the real sector never collapses in this country. There have been some deep crises but mostly the real economy is resilient, if not impervious to financial shocks. Consider the İmamoğlu case. The cost was about USD 60 billion,...
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Entanglements and Detachments in Regional Politics
Last December the Middle East drastically changed. It was the end of an era. My first comment on the region was that Erdogan had won big time in Syria. Assad had just fled the country and after a civil strife –or proxy war- that lasted 13 years, HTS...
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Can Shoes with Broken Heels Be Repaired?
In Aydın, an Aegean region city, the mayor changed allegiance and transferred from CHP to AKP amid allegations of corruption and political threats related to that. The problem is that in matters of corruption versus honesty the burden of proof is...
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The long view: technological innovation will prove decisive after 2025
Things have enormously changed in the last three centuries. Deirdre McCloskey provided estimates of 20x per capita real income change since the First Industrial Revolution. Turkey will stagnate –as it did in the last two decades- but the world at large...
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Opinion Polls and Advice
An intriguing question puzzles me. The Turkish political centre is both religious –although the modality of religiousness is debatable- and nationalist. There is the PKK issue –since when? The 1970s?- and the absolute majority of the population –except...
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The Week of the Central Bank
I don’t have much of a comment to offer on politics except a note on “Dear Antonio” (Gramsci). We are in a gestation period. By mid-September political events will speed up. In short, it all depends on which direction DEM will head on. A DEM totally...
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The New Middle Eastern Chess Board and Turkey
Turkish and Kurdish politics are being slowly but surely reshaped, recast, rekindled. The process seems slow but consider a sliding 12-month window: last year in July almost nobody was expecting the fall of the Assad regime. The earthquake engendered...
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Long Hot Summer
The summer ‘political truce’ isn’t working as anticipated. Arrests continue. We don’t know how fast political events will accelerate come October. The CHP convention case is postponed to September 15 but there is time until November 4. The results of...
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Political Truce amid Inflation and Growing Poverty
Prof. Dr. Gunduz Findikcioglu We ended H1 2025, and data convey a couple of strong messages. True, inflation has been falling but to where it falls is subject to discussion. Households don’t believe the official print, but more to the point the real...
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Has It All Ended in Twelve-Days?
“Where has all the socialism gone?” Those were the words of Wladimir Andreff 35 years ago. Where has all the war gone? Some people have already called it the Twelve-Day War, a reference to the SixDay War of 1967. For a number of reasons we don’t know...
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Iran and the Greater Middle East
There have been two great wars between Israel and Egypt & Syria: 1967 and 1973. In 1973 Israel was taken by surprise but won the upper hand nonetheless. It is said that it was almost wiped out to the sea. At that point both Egypt and Syria were under...
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Carl Schmitt Watches Us
There exists a natural generalization of Carl Schmitt’s idea that politics isn’t rivalry, but a keen struggle with the enemy. The Schmittian friend/foe distinction makes any political forecast difficult in Turkey. It serves the incumbent bloc because...
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Off The Hinges
The Turkish right-wing has a clear target. In fact, most right-wing populisms have clear targets. Here, the strategic standpoint is to create confusion and polarize the society. Populism is bent on using polarization to enhance its power. If populism...
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Leadership and Balance
The chair of the party (CHP) Özgür Özel has been performing very well recently. He may not be exceptionally charismatic but everyone thinks he has become a true leader. He kept the opposition afloat by standing firmly alongside İmamoğlu and by...
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Hard Choices
Both political and economic choices are hard choices today. Clearly the government has no intention of easing tensions: arrests continue. Peace and democracy are just words in most parts of the world. Well, once you embark upon that road, that is when...
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PKK and Turkey
PKK said farewell to arms after –at least- 47 years. The movement existed before it embraced the name of PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) in 1978 so it is possible to extend its history to 52 years. Well, so far so good; peace and all that, it is nice...
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TR MONITOR, ISSUE 406 10 - 16 May 2025
Prof. Dr. Gunduz Findikcioglu In terms of policy and intentions, it isn’t. There are still reserves left to defend the currency and the tourism season nears; so it isn’t. Market participants like the new interest rate level and they seem to favour TL...
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TR MONITOR, ISSUE 406 03 - 09 May 2025
Prof. Dr. Gunduz Findikcioglu Are all authoritarianisms alike? They resemble each other but they are not carbon copies of each other. Their discourses are similar though. During the cold war right-wing politicians and generals that prompted coups...
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Laws of Politics
Economists often say ‘oh this is just Econ 101’. It may be fun for a Ph.D. Economics or Finance to claim that a lot of people do not even understand Econ 101 or Fin 101. In many cases, however, they themselves lack a clear understanding of Politics...
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Central Bank’s Correct Move
The CBRT has made the right move. Having said that, the banking sector at large is sound from a capital adequacy viewpoint and this is a huge advantage compared to past episodes. Of course FX lending restrictions and rapidly rising funding costs will...
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Traps and Pitfalls
TR MONITOR, ISSUE 403 12-18 April 2025 I wrote a short comment on Trump’s might and mastery but besides this, it is all about Turkey this week. The long holiday helped street protests to fade away but they were bound to die off anyway, at least in...
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Wind, Fury, and Political Forecasts
It is all politics now, and this is Turkey, the land of uncertainties. So, we should always expect kind of turmoil but this time around the stakes are very high. This is not like, say, the German elections: there is a parliament in Turkey as well but...
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Wuthering Heights
TR MONITOR, ISSUE 401 29 March-04 April 2025 Prof. Dr. Gunduz Findikciogl When the Assad regime collapsed in early December I thought that Erdogan had won big time. This was not an exaggeration. Now he enjoys the unconditional support of Trump....
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Another Perfect Storm
Is Turkey becoming increasingly out of touch with reality? Or does it satellite around a new orbit, having been tempted to engage with a strange attractor, especially after the regime change in Syria? Is Trump that attractor? Anyway, was all this a...
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Stagnation and Fear of Floating
Fear of floating is still extant if not persistent. It was a scar of the 1990s but habits die hard. In Turkey, ever since the currency is let to float, a dirty float mostly, people have always asked when the exchange rate would hit the sky. It is as if...
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The Saga of Turkish Banks
Prof. Dr. Gunduz Findikcioglu The Turkish financial system is based on banks, not on capital markets. Equity capital markets are not that shallow but even if they deepen further, banking will remain to be at the core –as in Germany. Why is that so?...
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Authoritarian Trends and Stationary States
Consider Mancur Olson’s oft-quoted theory of stationary bandit. As a concept in political economics it has little to do with banditry, literally speaking. It means that a ruler centralizes all authority and distributes all economic rents, even profits,...
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Dilemma Solvers
Prof. Dr. Gunduz Findikcioglu In mundane language a charismatic leader is someone who drags crowds after him, attracts them to his persona like a magnet attracts metals, and inspires them all the time. His speech-act is conducive to historical...
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Snail-like crawls
Economists distinguish between the short and the long terms. I will talk about a certain type of stagnation –muddling through, i.e. ‘snail-like crawls’ below. Admittedly, this is a long-run concept. We owe this characterisation to Naum Jasny...
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The Logic of Political Survival
The government uses a suffocating full court press and this is not only directed towards political opponents. It is too soon to tell if something tangible, like a political re-alignment, will come out of this. However, polls do not imply a direct hit:...
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Base Case Scenarios
The economic base case scenario looks something like this. First, the CBRT rate will be sequentially cut but the real rate ex ante will still be positive. Second, inflation will fall to 25-30% and accordingly deposit rates will be somewhat higher by...
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The discrete charm of carry trade
No, it is not the ‘discrete charm of the bourgeoisie’. It is just a financial practice but it may carry the day in the next six months. Yes the bourgeoisie still exists but we are not in the 18th and 19th Centuries. We are not even in the early 2000s....
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Is any of this for real or not?
The political scene may look like a farce these days, if anything. On the political front on thing is clear: the main opposition party CHP is in trouble again. Somehow the incumbent bloc makes every political liability easily go away. Imagine that it...
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Are Black Swans Real?
Perhaps they are; but they are black so they do not come often. In the beginning of every year risks are enumerated and sometimes exaggerated. There are always risks but risk is not that big today although we have already seen a glimpse of what is to...
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Lower growth ahead but otherwise “All Quiet on the Western Front”
Some analysts talked about the year of the Black Swans but the way I see it the outlook is stable. I have picked a few items to convey a feeling about what has been and has not been achieved by the new programme so far. In the same vein, I look at the...
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Foreign trade deficit reaches USD 5.9bn by 10.5% decrease in October
preliminary foreign trade data for October, THE announced in cooperation with the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) and the Ministry of Trade, were announced. Notably, exports within the scope of the General Trade System showed a promising...
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The five signs of an interest rate cut in the MPC statement
Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) THE left the policy rate unchanged at 50% at its November meeting. The Central Bank, which has left the interest rate untouched in the last eight meetings after raising it by 41.5 points in nine meetings, made a...
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Industrial production declined, stable unemployment, and rising retail and housing sales
Turkish Statistical Institute released THE the September results of the industrial production index. Accordingly, the decrease in annual industrial output continued for the fourth consecutive month. The index increased by 1.6% monthly in September and...
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Inflation drops slower than forecasts
(CPI) increased THE CONSUMER PRICE INDEX by 2.88% in October compared to the previous month, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat). The October reading exceeded the market forecast of 2.6% slightly. The rate of decrease slowed in...
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Inflation expectations improve
inflation expectations improved SECTORAL in October. Here are the 12-month-ahead inflation expectations by sector: ► Expectations of market participants de creased by 0.1 points to 27.4%. ► Real sector’s expectations decreased by 1.6 points to...
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What does the consumer confidence index tell?
confidence index rose by 3% THE CONSUMER to 80.6 in October. The financial situation of households at present decreased by 0.2% to 64.8. The financial situation expectation of households over the next 12 months increased by 6.1% to 82.1 and was the...
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Housing market booms
skyrocketed 37% to 140,919 in HOME SALES September, compared to the same month of the previous year, hitting a 28-month high, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat). House sales reached the highest monthly level in September after...
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Best current account balance data in five years
account balance in August THE CURRENT gave a surplus of USD 4.3bn. The current account balance, excluding gold and energy, showed a surplus of USD 9bn. This marks a significant improvement, reaching the highest level after the USD 5.95bn surplus seen...
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PMI in contraction zone for six months
has been in the contraction zone for a PMI significant six-month period, indicating prolonged economic challenges. The Istanbul Chamber of Industry (ISO) Turkiye manufacturing PMI experienced a significant 3.5-point decline to 44.3 in September,...
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Reserves at record-high
total reserves soared THE CENTRAL BANK’S by USD 2.74bn to USD 156.39bn in the week ending September 20, compared to the previous week, breaking a record. The Central Bank’s gross reserves amounted to USD 94.1bn, and its gold reserves totaled USD...
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Export climate looks promising
THE ISTANBUL CHAMBER OF INDUSTRY ɑISOɒ Turkiye Manufacturing Export Climate Index, which measures the contributions of the country’s manufacturing industry to primary export markets, rose by 0.5 points from 50.8 to 51.3 in August, compared to the...
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NEW ERA
Turkiye and Japan marks the 100th anniversary of diplomatic relations this year. Based on the centennial history of amicability and friendship, the two countries have the potential to boost bilateral trade and deepen economic ties further. The Free...
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