The crisis surrounding the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a rival of President Erdogan, is hitting the Turkish economy hard and is expected to continue to do so in the near future.
According to estimates, within three days of the arrest, foreign investors withdrew no less than $20 billion from Turkey.
In Turkey, independent economists report that the central bank has diverted about $25 billion from its foreign exchange reserves to prevent the lira from continuing to collapse.
This figure is much higher than the estimates heard in recent days that the Turkish central bank "burned" $10 billion on strengthening the lira. If the $25 billion figure is correct, Turkey still has about $60 billion left in reserves that it can use to prevent a collapse in the currency exchange rate.
