Analiyzing Main Determinant of Currency, Debt and Banking Crises and Fragilities in Turkey

Abstract

The basic lessons obtained from financial turbulences all over the world are the need to spot main causes, identify the triggering risk factors and consequently develop resolution plans for the potential financial crises, which include the establishment of a sound and strong financial system with strengthened institutional and structural bodies. Accurately and timely detection of the main causes that trigger financial fragilities emerging from currency, debt and banking is supposed to guide regulators to find "to the point" solutions to the fragility problems and to isolate their effects. Since in the Turkey case, financial crises were observed to occur in the form of twin crises or triplet crises, in this paper, we put forward Turkey-specific diagnoses and suggestions. Thus, the main factors that triggered financial turmoils in Turkey's last quarter century are low GDP, inadequate equity capital, insufficient bank returns, poor FX reserve, high inflation, short position-hot money policy, capital outflows, manipulative credit ratings and bank inertia, namely a trade off between credit transactions and risk-free investment vehicles.