Paranoiac Erdogan indulges in conspiracy illusions

Turkey's president Ragab Tayyeb Erdogan has blamed the nation's economic woes on attacks he says were plotted internationally by foreign powers or groups perceived as terrorists by Ankara.

Erdogan likened the motivations behind the so-called attacks to a 2016 failed coup attempt. Erdogan said volatility in the lira currency, which has been hovering around record lows for months, was a result of the attacks.

"There are games being plotted through the exchange rate, inflation, interest rate triangle. This game has the same aim of putting our economy in crisis as the sneaky aim behind July 15 (coup attempt)," Erdogan told members of his ruling Ak Party, and added his government could take "new supportive steps" in the coming period to alleviate the impact of the pandemic.

The economics profession would beg to differ. But Erdogan, as with much else, is not inclined to listen. On the contrary, to force the central bank to pursue his bizarre monetary policy, Erdogan has installed his utterly unqualified son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, as the country’s minister of finance and treasury.

Turkey's President has been urging the Turkish central bank to cut interest rates in a bid to support the economy. The president has already fired three central bank chiefs in under two years.

Turkey is saddled with debt and its currency, the lira, is plunging, yet the central bank has been all but prohibited from defending the currency by raising interest rates, because Erdogan believes that raising interest rates actually causes inflation.

While Turkey is dealing with rising inflation, investors already anticipate inflation to rise globally this year due to supply-side bottlenecks and greater demand for goods and services with economies reopening.

The paranoia-fuelled attraction to bogus science often motivates authoritarians to endorse conspiracy theories. Erdogan, who has long been convinced that external forces are relentlessly plotting against his regime, is no exception.