Turkish Lira, the champion loser against the dollar

The dollar/Turkish Lira parity went above the 2.68 level at mid-week last week and it has shown a tendency to remain in the 2.75 lira band. The Central Bank had to make a written intervention in this situation and "challenged" that in its April 22 meeting; they would make a decision for deterrence from the dollar. Despite this, it was said that the Central Bank's selling of foreign currency from the reserve and other efforts would not be very effective and after crossing the psychological 2.65 lira border, for the dollar to remain in the 2.80 lira band was highly probable.

Lira leading

The U.S. dollar which started 2015 at 2.32 liras rapidly gained value in the following three-and-a-half months. The lira with its 17 percent devaluation in three-and-a-half months was the local currency that lost the most against the dollar. Even the loss of the local currency that was the closest to the lira in depreciation, the Brazilian real, remained at 14.3 percent. The EU's emerging peripheral country, the Czech Republic's koruna, lost less than 12 percent while the Polish zloty lost 6 percent and the Hungarian forint 5.4 percent. Devaluations in other developing countries were limited. The South African rand lost less than 3.5 percent, the Indonesian rupiah less than 3 percent and the Mexican peso around 2.3 percent.

The resilience against the dollar of the currencies of other emerging countries in the first three-and-a-half months is also noteworthy.  The Russian ruble was able to stop the loss of blood against the dollar in 2015 by both decreasing its political risks and increasing interest rates. It can be seen that it has made up for the 16 percent of its losses against the dollar.

Among emerging countries, India is one of those that were...