Turkey crisis is about geopolitics

The bigger worry for analysts is the impact on China of an escalating emerging market crisis

As Turkey’s currency gets battered, pundits in the western media have been holding forth on how the country brought the crisis upon itself. Turkey, we are told, kept its interest rates artificially low and facilitated a credit boom financed by foreign flows. This was a crisis waiting to happen.

The story is not as simple as that. True, the Turkish lira has been depreciating for a while. But the steep fall this month (of more than 25 per cent) has been triggered by political events: US sanctions early this month followed by more sanctions later.  

The provocation for the sanctions could not