Question Over Forex Reserves Rattles Turkey’s Erdogan
Turks and foreign investors alike want to know where $128 billion went.
Next question.
Photographer: Adem Altan/AFP
“Where is the $128 billion?” The question, turned into a political slogan by Turkey’s largest opposition party and emblazoned on posters and billboards in Istanbul, has rattled the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Republican People’s Party, known by its Turkish acronym CHP, says the government blew through $128 billion in foreign-exchange reserves over two years — coinciding with the period Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak was treasury and finance minister — in a failed attempt to prop up the lira. (Some critics put the figure higher, at $140 billion; Goldman Sachs reportedly estimated it exceeded $100 billion in 2020 alone.)