Erdogan’s zany monetary experiment is impoverishing Turkey

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.Turkey’s crisis is beginning to spin out of control. The latest rout began after the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, defended recent interest-rate cuts, foresaw new ones and suggested he was pursuing a weaker currency to drive growth. “The competitive force of the exchange rate leads to increase in investment, production and employment,” Mr Erdogan said on November 22nd. He got what he bargained for the next day, when unnerved investors began dumping the lira. Within hours the currency had fallen by 15%, its worst showing in years, before erasing some of its losses the next day. Small protests erupted in parts of Istanbul and Ankara. Mr Erdogan says Turkey is waging an “economic war of independence”. It is causing grave collateral damage.