The bloody coup attempt on July 15 was a real attack on Turkish democracy, which the nation heroically averted. Yet the attempt still had detrimental effects on Turkey, such as initiating an excessive post-coup crackdown. Moreover, it intensified the paranoid political psychology among the ruling elite, in which every problem Turkey faces is seen as yet another nefarious “coup attempt.”
The latest of these endless “coup attempts” is the declining state of the Turkish economy, which is marked by rapid devaluation of the Turkish lira vis-a-vis the US dollar. In the past three years, the value of the US dollar almost doubled, going up from less than 2 Turkish liras to more than 3.5 Turkish liras. This dramatic fall intensified especially in the past three months — in other words, since the coup attempt.
