Relative calm at home, chaos abroad
The Peace Commission unveiled it is not-so-eagerly awaited report to the Grand Assembly, which covers matters related to the dissolution of PKK and fate of Ocalan, as well as suggestions for democratization. The Grand Assembly will start debating the proposals after Ramadan. While the PKK portion of the legislation looks fairly easy, President Erdogan most likely doesn’t intend to follow up on Committee’s proposals regarding re-democratization of the political system. At the end, the politics author doesn’t want to invest much time and effort into Peace Process coverage, until it culminates in the next logical step, which is a call by AKP-MHP to other parties to write a new Constitution.
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On the economy front, production indices for Q4 suggest sequential GDP growth was probably positive in the final quarter of last year, though the margin of error in this “guesstimate” is quite large, as usual. Meanwhile, real sector and consumer confidence indices for February suggest that confidence, broadly speaking, has been improving -- so far -- in the first quarter of the year. Job growth was positive in the final quarter of last year, as industry and services both generated some employment. But on the whole, job growth has been broadly stagnant since the second half of 2024, and the so-called broad unemployment rate remains hugely elevated. On the other hand, according to the hourly earnings index released by Turkstat last week, wage growth seems to have kept up with CPI inflation in 2025.
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Cosmic Strategist rears his rascally head to talk about three major short-term risks awaiting the rally in Turkish assets. War with Iran plays a large role in His analysis.
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