Minister of Treasury and Finance Mehmet Şimşek stated that he does not believe the recent turbulence will have a lasting effect. He emphasized that inflation has clearly decreased. Regarding developments in foreign trade, Şimşek said, “We will be relatively less affected as what determines us is the domestic market.”

Minister Şimşek is speaking at the IV. Agriculture and Forestry Assembly “Agricultural Economy Workshop” program in Ankara. Highlights from Minister Şimşek’s statements include: A significant portion of exports, excluding rule-based countries, goes to such geographies, hence, despite protectionism in foreign trade, we will be relatively less affected compared to similar countries like us. Turkey’s dependence on exports is low compared to similar countries. While producing our GDP, we have gone through internal demand-based growth, not export-based. The repercussions on us will be more limited compared to other countries because what determines us is the domestic market. We have free trade agreements with a total of 54 countries outside the US and EU, and 68% of our exports go to these countries. Over 80% of our exports go to neighboring and friendly countries. Turkey’s gross debt to GDP ratio stands at 93%, well below the world average.

Our program has a goal; to achieve sustainable high growth and fair distribution, we aim for price stability to reach this goal, meaning bringing inflation down to single digits and maintaining fiscal discipline. The essence of the program is a structural transformation program that will make the gains permanent. It is clear that we are facing a serious inflation problem, but first, we took control of inflation. It was a period of control, and as of the second half of 2024, we entered a period of disinflation.

There is success in disinflation, we are close to the program. I do not believe that the recent turbulence will have a lasting impact.

There is rigidity in service inflation, we increased the upper limit by 25% in rents, and there is no intervention in education.

Inflation is clearly decreasing and will continue to do so because this is our top priority.

We aim to reduce the budget deficit this year, and there may be more slowdown in growth than we anticipated.