ANKARA, Turkey — The Turkish economy sank into recession in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to figures released by the national statistics authority March 11. The news is highly inconvenient to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is campaigning vigorously for March 31 municipal elections in which voters are expected to express their anger over the soaring cost of food.

TurkStat said the fourth-quarter contraction was 3% year-on-year, and 2.4% from the previous quarter. By the seasonally adjusted, quarterly measurement, the economy also contracted in the third quarter of 2018 (by 1.6%), meaning that Turkey has suffered the two consecutive quarters of negative growth that characterize a recession.

However, a senior economics official told Reuters that the government preferred the year-on-year measurement of contraction. As the economy grew by 1.8% year-on-year in the third quarter, it seems the government will wait to see what happens to GDP in the first quarter of this year before officially assessing whether Turkey is in recession.

However, financial media had no such hesitation. Bloomberg headlined a headlined a story on the topic: “Turkey Enters First Recession in a Decade as Elections Loom.” It quoted Julian Rimmer, a London trader with Investec Bank, as saying: “This is an indictment of Erdo-nomics and a direct consequence of a monetary policy in 2018 conducted in the interests of short-term political expediency rather than economic pragmatism.”