Things are about to get messy as Turkish authorities have brought - and extended - their fight against the government's perceived political foes into the $750 billion financial battlegrounds.
Eleven former non-government senior bank officials told Bloomberg News that they had been terminated over the past two years on orders from banking regulators supervised by the President's son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, who has been treasury and finance minister since July 2018.
All spoke on condition of anonymity - except one, fearing more repercussions. "It is time for me to speak up," said Kerim Rota, 55, who turns to politics as an opposition member now that his three-decade run, capped by his role as Akbank TAS's deputy chief executive, is over.
On Legal Actions & 'Traitors'
The banking regulatory and supervisory authority, known as the BDDK, called the allegations false and vowed to take legal action in a statement on Sunday, saying its position in recruiting top bankers is consistent with best practices.
Albayrak-led policymakers previously said their management helped Turkey rebound from a concerted financial assault in mid-2018, when the lira collapsed as much as 45 percent against the US currency.
Two senior government officials say the economy's stewards are trying to eliminate what they call economic "traitors" in both the public and private sectors, especially in the wake of the 2018 lira collapse.
Pressure Tactics & Interventions
The bankers paint a picture of a government that is steadily dependent on pressure tactics and legal threats to enforce its economic program, as well as political loyalists.
"We argue that without intervention, the private sector is no longer free to act. State intervention has undermined the bond and currency markets themselves," the bankers said.
While the financial market has long been a battleground for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who for years protested against what he called an "interest-rate lobby" which hiked the borrowing costs of the country, new ground broke in the involvement in bank hiring and firing.
Even during a crackdown in 2013 that responded to demonstrations against the government and two years of emergency rule that followed a a failed coup in 2016, banks and bond dealers remained relatively untouched.
That changed with the dismissal of Rota in late 2017 when tensions with Western allies were disrupting markets and unnerving investors.
Since then, in early 2018, one executive has been ousted; another six, between August and October 2018, the height of the crisis caused by Turkey's currency collapse.
