Erdogan Casts Bankers as Villain of Turkish Protests

[Purveyor]

By Firat Kayakiran - Jun 19, 2013
As Turkey’s government seeks to rally support by identifying culprits behind the unprecedented explosion of anger that erupted in recent weeks, one group has featured on almost every list: bankers.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan began blaming a so-called “interest-rates lobby” in the first week after anti-government protests spread nationwide on May 31. Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan said “blood-sucking” financiers, seeking to push Turkey’s interest rates back up, helped provoke the movement that ignited over a police crackdown against people opposed to development plans in Istanbul’s Taksim Square.

The rhetoric resonates in a majority Muslim country where many remember skyrocketing borrowing costs that undermined the economy in the pre-Erdogan decade. In 2001, the year before his party came to power, the government spent more on interest payments than it earned in tax income. In the last two years the Islamist-rooted Erdogan, 59, and his ministers have frequently accused a rates lobby of working to undermine the economy.

That’s “very divisive and unproductive language from a country trying to break through the middle-income trap,” Murat Ucer, a former official at Turkey’s central bank who now works at New York-based economic advisory firm GlobalSourcePartners, wrote in e-mailed comments on June 15. The Turkish economy, which grew 2.2 percent last year, “is having hard time gaining traction” even with record-low interest rates, he said.

‘Without Working’

Erdogan’s government has brought interest rates down as it reduced budget deficits and debt and lured record amounts of foreign investment. Last month, yields on two-year debt fell to a record low of 4.79 percent. In October 2002, the month before his Justice and Development Party or AKP won its first election, the government paid more than 70 percent on nine-month bonds.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-19/erdogan-casts-bankers-as-villain-of-turk-protest-boosting-yields.html

[pscot]

1. "Bloodsucking Financiers"

has a nice ring to it.

[socialist_n_TN]

2. Well, even a blind hog can find an acorn every now and then....

I'm not saying he's wrong (TONS maybe even most of society's ills can be laid at the feet of the rentiers), but Erdogan is just using the Islamic distaste for usury to find a common cause with the protestors and also a scapegoat. He and his party and family benefits for those very same bankers.