Immediately after President Erdoğan announced that a foreign exchange difference would be paid to the citizen who keeps his money in Turkish Lira (TL) in the bank, there was a rapid return from dollars to TL the previous day. This turn started to ease as of 10:00 yesterday morning. What will happen, where the dollar will stand was not clear at the time of writing this article. However, the depreciation of our currency against the dollar, which has been going on for days, stopped and started to gain value. The reason for this is generally attributed to the fact that the money in banks is kept in TL by economists, or rather the conversion from dollars to TL. Let me just say that, whether our money has gained value due to the return to TL or another reason, the uncertainty and ebb and flow in the economy will calm down, I think, will please the society. True, those who have money in this country are the ones who win whether the dollar goes down or not, because for them, making money out of money has become a way of behavior.
While explaining the decisions taken, President Erdoğan said, "None of our citizens will need to transfer their deposits to foreign currency just because the exchange rate will be higher, in order to prevent people from being damaged by the appreciation of the dollar as a result of keeping their money in TL instead of dollars. The increase in the dollar will be reflected in deposits. If the exchange rate return is above the deposit earnings, the difference will be paid to the citizens," and some circles considered it as a disguised interest rate increase. Thus, it is stated that the exchange rate in the dollar increased abnormally by insisting on the government's interest rate cut.
Let me point out right away, I don't know if the exchange rate difference to a citizen who keeps his money in TL can be a disguised increase in interest. I think this should be seriously considered. However, the fact that the rise in the dollar was restrained at the first moment, and beyond that, the fact that the dollar decreased from 18 TL to 13 TL in a short time will alleviate the problems experienced. In this respect, in order to maintain this balance, the dollar must be reduced below 10 TL at least. Is it possible? Time will show that. However, if a step taken caused the dollar to lose value by 5 TL in a short time, it seems that results can be obtained. As such, since our money was suddenly starting to gain value with the promise of paying foreign exchange difference to TL deposits in banks, why hasn't this practice been put into effect until now? One cannot help but ask if we should have panicked about where we are going as a society.
Or is this a step towards learning by trial and error? If so, who will be held accountable for the troubles our country and millions of people are experiencing? Moreover, while trying to get out of the bottleneck in which the economy has fallen into, will those who have billions in the banks still profit from this business, and the sacrifice will fall on those with narrow and fixed incomes? I guess the main goal of the free market system being implemented is to make the rich richer and the poor even poorer. Since the applications show this, shouldn't this crippled system that has been implemented for years need to be changed? Because on the one hand, the system in question always demands sacrifice from those who work, with low and fixed incomes, when the rich are rewarded with exchange rate difference when it comes to sacrifice, if they do not convert their money from dollars to TL without any additional income, is there not an injustice in this business?