Borsa Istanbul converts foreign exchange assets into Turkish lira

The Borsa Istanbul Group announced yesterday that it converted all its foreign exchange assets, excluding short-terms needs, into Turkish lira.

"It is seen that speculative approaches for showing Turkish economy as negative before the elections [on June 24] are not backed by current indicators. As Borsa Istanbul we would like to re-emphasize our commitment and confidence to Turkish economy and lira," it said in a statement.

The move came after the U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate saw a historic high, climbing over 4.7500 at Wednesday's market opening.

Turkey's sole stock exchange group said the decision was taken while considering that among financial tables of all sectors and companies, there is no economic data that shows a necessity for such high levels in foreign exchange rates.

Emerging markets' local currencies have been weakening against the U.S. dollar since the beginning of this year. The U.S. dollar gained around 26 percent against the Turkish lira, nearly 24 percent against the Argentine peso, almost 11 percent against the Brazilian real, more than 7 percent against the Russian ruble and around 6 percent against the Indian rupee.

The U.S. dollar/lira exchange rate was at 3.78 at the beginning of this year while last year $1 traded for 3.65 lira on average.