Now that the elections are less than two months away, we should talk about the path the Turkish economy will follow for the next five years, starting from the second quarter of 2018.

First of all, the discussions on the road map of the Turkish economy during all the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan periods, but especially after the completion of the Stand-By Agreement process with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2008, were held on a rather false platform. Here is the fallacy: President Erdoğan is shifting toward a political, even a populist, place rather than the plane of economics, while addressing the basic headings of the economy, especially the issue of interest. However, the "facts" of the economy and the market are very different. At the end of the day, politics must come to "market facts," every delay here is costing us. However, what President Erdoğan wants to say is the exact opposite.

Those who advocate the above mentioned incorrect thesis are so common that in recent years this thesis has become an everyday supra-political argument in "certain" circles. As such, it has now become one of the common grounds of Erdoğan opponents. Of course, if you turn such a discourse into a "supra-political" argument, you must also put it on solid ground. Here, too, Joseph Goebbels-esque lie machines have always come into play. The lie that Turkey will gradually adopt a statist and conservative economy have been extended on each plane in a systematic way. We are tired of dealing with these ever-failing lies.

But what is important here is not this hollow level, but the path Turkey's president persistently draws for the economy, regardless of the outcome of the elections, and expressing it correctly.

Let's not go too far to talk about it and compare Turkey's path from the end of the 80s up to the 2001 crisis and the 2001-2008 and 2008-2018 periods. This comprehensive comparison goes beyond the limits of this article, but here at least let's do the following:

With the effect of Sept. 12, Turkey experienced the process of a complete public rip-off and the transfer of public resources abroad at high interest rates in the period from the late 80s up to the 2001 crisis. Public sector deficits grew exponentially, especially during the 90s, until the 2001 crisis. This raised the real interest rates, and the high borrowing interest rates of the public further deteriorated both general and public balances. During this period, public banks carried water here with their famous policy of "duty-loss," but the most important was the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey's (CBRT) monetary policy aimed at valuable local money, which would result in a high devaluation. While the ratio of the public sector's total domestic and foreign debts to gross domestic product (GDP) in TL and foreign exchange was around 40 percent in 1990, it reached 90 percent before the 2001 crisis.

The duty-loss of public banks and the fixed exchange rate regime of the central bank resulted in printing money, which led to high inflation and a devaluation process. Thus, between 1987-2001, inflation never fell below 40 percent. Of course, this process was complementary to the Treasury's borrowing from the domestic market by selling bonds and bills at high interest rates. With the regulation in 1989, the restrictions on foreign borrowing were also lifted and the accelerating foreign hot money was included in valuable TL-interest rate cycle. The 2001 crisis did not change the basic paradigm, but the exchange rate regime, necessarily, ended, and Turkey moved to a floating exchange rate regime after the 2001 crisis. However, the CBRT's inflation targeting did not allow the full implementation of the free exchange rate regime. Inflation was a monetary phenomenon, presupposing neoliberal theory, and it could only be solved by monetary measures. The most concrete example of the fallacy of this thesis is the Turkish economy.

But this misperception, despite all the warnings of the president, was not abandoned. Thus, in spite of the floating exchange rate regime, the CBRT also targeted the currency at high interest rates, in the name of inflation targeting. As such, perfect free market conditions, which are the basis of the floating exchange rate regime, were never realized.

Since the beginning, President Erdoğan has pointed out that inflation is not a monetary phenomenon alone, but a structural production-based issue and a result, saying that high interest and high financing costs are the biggest contributors to inflation. In fact, this thesis was not against facts of either the market or Turkey, on the contrary, it was the fact of all the emerging economies along with the real economy, market and Turkey.

Turkey's high interest-inflation-devaluation spiral in the last 30 years is a nonmarket dead-end street. Turkey should get out of this vicious cycle.

This dead-end street, inevitably, hampers the CBRT's independence and the use of its monetary policy instruments. The monetary policy is a trap that puts its authority on a constantly high interest or high devaluation spiral, and it is definitely against the free market conditions and the aims of a fully open country that strictly enforces the floating exchange rate regime.

Today, the theses of those distorting what the president says as nonmarket, have proven to be really nonmarket. Those who advocate these theses as "liberalism" actually defend the high public debt economy in the 90s. The same minds are defending a nonmarket monopolistic economy based on high interest and unnecessarily valuable local currency, along with borrowing and hot money.

Here, in this new era, Turkey will overcome this vicious circle, build a fully open, human-centered and inclusive growth and a competitive market economy in real terms, and make all the reforms in this direction.