In light of Turkey's EU bid and the successful IMF-led disinflation program, this book explores the evolution and performance of the Turkish banking sector. Analyzing the repercussions of overall economic structure, financial crises and political instability on its financial sector, it scrutinizes the prospects for the future of banking sectors.

The assessment is a featured report of Turkey’s credit boom in the middle of 2011. The country faced the global crisis successfully because of earlier significant capital buffers. Overall, the country was healthy financially, but there was a slowdown in loan growth and market vulnerabilities. This insignificant shudder caused the regime to strengthen the fiscal sector and insurance framework. Despite new macrofinancial risks in domestic and international developments, the Executive Board still considers Turkey a balanced power.

July 1999 Between 1989-97, large private capital flows to Turkey contributed to economic growth. Yet chronic and high fiscal deficits - coupled with an inconsistent financial sector regulatory framework - left the banking system and the economy vulnerable to capital flow reversals and external shocks. Recent developments in a number of emerging economies have heightened interest in the relationship between macroeconomic management and financial regulation, in an environment of open capital accounts and large-scale movements of private capital. Celasun, Denizer, and He analyze the Turkish experience with capital flows in a macroeconomy characterized by chronically high inflation and fiscal deficits. They study the relationship between capital flows, macroeconomic management, and vulnerability in the financial system. Their analysis highlights the importance of fiscal policy in an era of large capital flows. Fiscal imbalances contributed both to real exchange rate appreciation and high real interest rates in Turkey. The high interest rates the government must pay on domestic debt have become one of the key issues of Turkey's macroeconomic management. Only by reducing its interest expenses can fiscal deficits be reduced and greater stability be achieved. The Turkish banking system, in becoming increasingly integrated with international financial markets, has become vulnerable to shifts in market confidence. Banks borrowed abroad in response to macroeconomic imbalances to benefit from high interest rates on domestic loans and government paper. In the process, the banks have exposed themselves to interest rate risk, to foreign-exchange risk, and to large credit risks. To reduce the Turkish economy's vulnerability to external shocks, financial regulation must be strengthened simultaneously with the achievement of macroeconomic stability. This paper - a product of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector Unit, Europe and Central Asia Region - is part of a larger effort in the region to examine the relationship between capital flows and economic management. The authors may be contacted at [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected].

November 1997 Promoting competition in Turkey's newly liberalized financial market requires striking a balance between potentially conflicting objectives and the risk entailed in financial deregulation. Banking must be regulated and well-supervised, but Turkey's banking system also needs to become far more competitive. Until 1980, Turkey's financial system was shaped to support state-oriented development. After the 1960s, the financial system, dominated by commercial banks, became an instrument of planned industrialization. Turkey had an uncompetitive financial market and an inefficient banking system. Controlled interest rates, directed credit, high reserve requirements and other restrictions on financial intermediation, and restricted entry of new banks Ñ plus the exit of many banks betwee 1960 and 1980 Ñ created a concentrated market dominated by banks owned by industrial groups with oversized branch networks and high overhead costs. Turkey since 1980 has seen a trend toward liberalization of its financial market. Reforms eliminated interest rate controls, eased the entry of new financial institutions, and allowed new types of instruments. Regulatory barriers were relaxed, attracting many banks (both Turkish and foreign) into the system, and Turkey's banking system became integrated with world markets. Denizer examines how reform has changed the system, focusing on Turkey's commercial retail banking market. He finds that: * Although reform reduced concentration in the industry, leading banks are still able to coordinate their pricing decisions overtly. High profitability appears to have resulted from the banks' uncompetitive pricing rather than their efficiency. Deregulation and liberalization should be continued and strengthened. * The entry of small-scale firms alone is not enough to increase competition, so new banks should probably not be expected to alter the market structure. * To promote competition will require addressing barriers to both entry and mobility. The main barrier to mobility seems to be the size of the large banks, which exerts a significant negative effect on competition. * Interbank rivalry among the leading banks can't be facilitated without creating new banks of a certain size with a reasonable number of branches. Breaking up public banks (which hold 30 percent of sectoral assets, excluding the Agricultural Bank and three development banks) could help create 15 to 20 new banks with 40 to 50 branches. This would reduce concentration and improve mobility in retail banking. * Breaking up the public banks before privatization would probably also improve their governance structures and efficiency. * Promoting the entry of nonbanks and local banks would also increase the number of institutions competing for deposits. Turkey lacks a healthy variety of credit institutions and should consider developing a mortgage market and creating institutions for housing finance. This paper-a product of the Development Research Group-is part of a larger effort in the group to study financial reforms and financial markets.