Word: turkishly
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Suzan Sabanci Dinçer is all too familiar with banking crises and their devastating effects. A scion of one of Turkey's most famous business dynasties, she is chairwoman of Akbank, the country's biggest privately owned bank. Back in 2001, she lived through a meltdown of the Turkish banking system and a terrifying 9.5% one-year drop in gross domestic product. Akbank posted a big loss that year, but at least it escaped a worse fate: almost half of the nation's 80-plus banks disappeared...
...raging, this time globally, and as Sabanci Dinçer watches it unfold from her elegantly furnished 27th-floor office in the heart of Istanbul, she inevitably has a feeling of déjà vu. But this time, while there's trepidation, there's also hope. The Turkish banks that survived that earlier crisis emerged from it much better capitalized - and more heavily regulated - than their peers in the U.S. or Europe. Today, thanks to surging investment and exports, the Turkish economy is double the size it was in 2001, and the nation's financiers have been among...
...years in which growth averaged almost 7% annually, most forecasters expect the economy to expand by less than 4% this year and next. Foreign direct investment poured into Turkey this decade as companies ranging from French insurer Axa to U.S. private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts snapped up Turkish assets. But that flood has now been reduced to a trickle. The burgeoning middle class is starting to curb its free-spending ways, and the nation's two major export industries - automobiles and textiles - are watching nervously as international sales drop...
...Indians, Hungarians and others - thought their buoyant domestic growth could insulate them from a downturn in the U.S. and Western Europe. Now they're discovering that it can't. "A lot of us gave credence to 'decoupling,' " says Ümit Boyner, who together with her husband runs a big Turkish retail empire. "Looking ahead, we're wondering if we've even seen the worst...
...about transforming the economy after its election in 2002. Spurred on by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provided financial support during the 2001 crisis, the government pushed through strict budgets, monetary discipline and a big privatization campaign. Inflation and interest rates tumbled, and growth took off. The Turkish business community, while privately nervous about what some refer to as the government's "creeping Islamization," nonetheless applauded its free-market reformist zeal. But over the past 18 months, that zeal has faded and the reform process has stalled...