IZMIR, Turkey — Keen to show off mega-projects ahead of crucial polls next month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan opened a $3.4 billion financial center in Istanbul on Monday as he pledged a “new financial ecosystem” for economic crisis-hit Turkey. 

“Istanbul Financial Center (IFC) will create a new ecosystem by linking three continents. It will increase the country's potential to attract investment by facilitating international capital flows,” Erdogan told a large audience of ministers, economy bureaucrats and the public. 

For many of its critics, the opening ceremony is no more than a political campaign or, worse, a sad reminder that Western investors have long fled Turkey’s big emerging market. “This is an old dream that is devoid of reality,” Erdal Saglam, a veteran economics columnist, said on the independent TV chain KRT. “Turkey, thanks to Erdogan’s economic policies, is far from becoming a financial center. This huge complex, at an earthquake zone, is an empty dream — figuratively and literally.”  

Saglam pointed out that Istanbul had dropped 10 places on the 2023 Global Finance Center Index compared to 2022. The index ranks the competitiveness of financial centers based on assessments from an online questionnaire together with over 100 indices from organizations such as the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Economist Intelligence Unit.  The centers are assessed on infrastructure, technology, financial development, reputation, connectivity, corruption and regulatory enforcement, among other factors.