“For those who are obsessed with the Dollar/Pastor correlation…”
Spiked right after the Central Bank decision, Dollar first hit TRY 4.92 then fell to 4.85. Just then, we heard that a house arrest ruling for the US Pastor on trial was issued by the criminal court. Dollar hit record lows. With that, I started to receive interesting, or rather improper, comments and reactions from some experts, among whom were my friends.
I will not repeat here what they said to me since I do not wish to mortify them by divulging the words they used against me, words not befitting them. As a matter of fact, their reaction has confirmed, in a way, what I have been trying to tell for days.
They were mad, because their “Dollar will spike if interest rates do not go up” hypothesis was disproved. They desperately held on to the Pastor ruling. In short, they said, “USD/TRY would never go down, if the court did not issue such decision”. Thus, they refuted their own hypothesis. I would like to sincerely thank them for that.
Although based on wrong motivations, this proposition emphasizes a certain requirement that I have been trying to explain for years: “We should establish proper ties with our political, trade and strategic partners in order for TRY can achieve stability. Also, we should be picky when it comes to choosing our partners.” That’s all we need to do.
“We should avoid making the same mistakes over and over again…”
The exactitude of this approach was approved once again when the pastor case has further heightened tensions between Turkey and the United States. The fact that we are having political-diplomatic-social-economic issues is the real reason behind rising exchange rates, not because interest rates are low. Turkey has been struggling with this problem more than two decades now. The never-ending cycle of devaluation-inflation shows that we are repeating the same mistake at some point, which is the fact that we are more interested in “growth” rather than “development”.
This inclination of ours naturally affects our diplomatic and political behaviours. Rapid growth makes us haughty. We don’t care about arts, sports or education. We are just focused on making money whereas we should be creating value. We celebrate our occasional winnings in a highly exaggerated way. Why do we do that? To show how we checkmated other nations. But instead, we should be telling that we only achieved these victories as a contribution to humanity. Naturally, this type of behaviour has its historical roots. Only when we act like that, a certain part of the world, that we would pay attention to, starts to behave.
Surely, merely motivated by this behaviour of ours, there are people who hope or operate for a financial crisis outbreak in Turkey. This is not a conspiracy theory. There are people or groups in all over the world who may wish to harm on another for whatever reason. But, it’s easy to make enemies than allies; the important thing is to maintain our friendships.
Neither growing at a rapid pace nor erecting buildings everywhere or launching mega projects… None of these will do any good in helping TRY achieve stability. Because, those projects I just mentioned can be put into reality by anyone. We should primarily focus on turning Turkish people into bright minds capable of ground-breaking innovations; providing the proper infrastructure to meet the 21st century needs; believing in the power of doing the right thing, not in the power of making money so as to prove Turkey is the land of trusted people; through art, creating a nation based on universal values and above all, fully grasp and properly implement the founding philosophy of the Republic of Turkey.
The moment we become fully integrated into this philosophy, only then we will be able to the difference between the power of interest rate decisions and the power of diplomatic decisions, thus making statements befitting our age and our experience.
