LONDON, United Kingdom – Turkey’s sovereign dollar bonds and equities tumbled, and the cost of insuring exposure to the country’s debt spiked asheads to a runoff with incumbent Tayyip Erdogan leading his opposition rival.
Turkey’s election board confirmed a May 28 runoff between Erdogan and opposition rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu after neither candidate secured the 50% threshold to win in the election on Sunday, May 14. With most votes counted, Erdogan led with 49.51% of the vote over Kilicdaroglu’s 44.88% share. “I haven’t been ensuring credit risk or sovereign payment risk in Turkey for the last three years. I’ve been declining it,” said Crispin Hodges, head of trade political risk at Canopius Group, commenting on the big spike in CDS pricing.
The presidential vote will decide not only who leads Turkey and shapes the foreign policy of the NATO-member country of 85 million people, but also how it is governed and how it tacklesLast week, Turkish stocks and bonds rallied when third-party presidential candidate Muharrem Ince withdrew from the race, boosting expectations of a Kilicdaroglu win.“I think if Erdogan is continuing, which is the strong base case, then foreign investors will be on the sidelines,” Akcakmak added.