Azernews.Az

By Gunay Hasanova

Turkey and its economy have become stronger than before the recent military coup, said Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Monday.

"Our economy is still as steady as a rock. There was not even a minor economic shock. But, this situation disturbed some sides," Anadolu agency quoted Yildirim as saying at a teleconference in Ankara.

Yildirim regarded a decision of Standard and Poor's to cut Turkey’s rating, as “bias”. "They downgraded Turkey's rate. Let it be, let them drop Turkey's rating. But we do not stand still with the help of their rate.

The U.S.-based international rating agency downgraded Turkey's main sovereign rating from BB+/B to BB/B on July 20, in the wake of the July 15 coup attempt, to little effect.

Fellow international ratings agency Moody’s said July 18 it was reviewing Turkey's credit rating.

"Our democracy and state of law is also stronger than before the attempted coup," Binali said.

Meanwhile, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister and former Minister of Finance Mehmet Simsek in his interview to Hurriyyet said that the country will stick to market economy.

"The commitment is that we will maintain sound, rational macroeconomic policies. There has never been and will never be consideration of any other model because that model worked well in Turkey. It has done phenomenally well in the past and the Turkish economy has proved itself to be fairly resilient in the face of various shocks," he said.

Earlier Turkish Central Bank reported that the country's current account deficit fell 33 percent year-on-year to $2.86 billion in May 2016 from $4.27 billion a year earlier, bringing the 12-month rolling deficit to $27.25 billion.

Moreover, the country's GDP increased by 4.8 percent in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period last year.

On July 15 evening, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country. Meanwhile, a group of servicemen announced about transition of power to them.

However, the rebelling servicemen started to surrender July 16 and Turkish authorities said the coup attempt failed. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the death toll as a result of the military coup attempt stood at 246 people excluding the coup plotters and over 2,000 people were wounded.

Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey on July 20.

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