, Columnist
Turkey Is Following a Familiar Emerging-Market Script
It rarely ends well for developing nations that borrow a lot in foreign-currency debt.
Istanbul building binge.
Photographer: Kerem Uzel/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
As it happens, I went to Turkey this past week for a wedding, rather than to watch an economic disaster unfold. But as luck would have it, I got to do the latter. Just as I arrived the Turkish lira’s value against the U.S. dollar was plunging by more than 20 percent:
That certainly helped me buy souvenirs for my friends back in the States. And it will be good for Turkey’s tourism industry, as well as exporters of goods such as autos and textiles. But overall, it’s bad news for Turkey. The country has been borrowing a lot of money from foreigners: