Too much AKP could mean instability

Turkey?s Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) government, which has been reelected since 2002, has been favored by international investors as a provider of a suitable investment environment.
There were two main reasons for this.

The first reason was because it has headed a single-party government. Not only locals, but also international investors had become fed up with poorly run, fragile coalitions based on an archaic, hybrid financial system that did not encourage sensible economic decisions. Turkey?s biggest ever financial crisis in 2001 was the peak of this, and actually helped the AK Parti to seize power through elections the next year.

The second reason was a guarantee given by AK Parti governments, especially in its first years, that economy conductor Ali Babacan would follow in the footsteps of Kemal Dervi?, who had been invited by the failing coalition government to come over from the World Bank to reform the Turkish banking system and cut a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). So long as the Tayyip Erdo?an governments presented an investor-friendly attitude, international investors liked the AK Parti and its one-party governments.

This picture started to change when Erdo?an started accusing the ?interest rate lobby? of being behind the wave of Gezi Park protests in June 2013, which he saw as a plot against his government. According to Erdo?an?s new rhetoric, international financiers (who he hinted were under the influence of the ?Israeli lobby?), did not want Turkey to prosper under the Muslim/conservative AK Parti rule. One of the examples for this shift came when Erdo?an employed the staunchly anti-Western, nationalist economy writer, Yi?it Bulut, as his chief economy advisor. Bulut did not hesitate to...