Economy Minister Mehmet Şimşek has said there is still disagreement between Turkey and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and that the government would wait for a solution before signing a deal with the organization.

“We need to protect our national interests. If the IMF takes our priorities into consideration, then we can sign a precautionary or ordinary stand-by deal with them,” he noted.
Speaking in Ankara yesterday, the minister said that the government would wait for talks with the IMF come to a sensible conclusion. Şimşek informed the press that officials from the agency had recently said that the IMF could not accept the Turkish government’s conditions before finishing post-program evaluations on previous stand-by deals signed between the IMF and Turkey.

Şimşek noted that the general circumstances in global markets have changed rapidly and that there was a difference between how the government and the IMF assessed these developments.

He added that the Turkish private sector had foreign debt that would have long-term negative effects on the economy. “It will only be possible to sign a deal with the IMF once they understand the developments in the Turkish economy and come up with a reasonable offer,” he noted.

Şimşek stated that Turkey was prepared to face the effects of the crisis. “Turkey is integrated with the rest of the world. You cannot escape the effects of the crisis. We had been proclaiming this fact constantly for the past year, and I do not agree with the criticism that the crisis caught the government unprepared,” he added.

He noted that the Turkish banking sector was well established and that Turkey has a stronger financial structure than ever. He also asserted that Turkey had made no contribution to this crisis and that it was externally based. Stressing that the government has taken effective measures to strengthen the country’s economy within the past few years, the minister said that if it were not for these precautions, the Turkish economy, in the midst of such a powerful crisis, would be badly shaken and would be in a much worse situation than it is. “We are face-to-face with a crisis that we can handle and withstand,” he said, adding that the government would not give up on taking necessary measures at any point.

In the meantime leading British daily the Financial Times has said that Ankara is hopeful about the IMF deal. Contrary to Şimşek’s statements, the daily said in an article that Turkey was close to agreeing to a new financing deal with the IMF; however, it added that the structure and terms of the deal and the amount of funding it would involve had yet to be decided.

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