It has been a week Turkey is under crown fire. The reason the country failed to prevent the spread of the forest fires were the lack of aerial interference. As the government hesitated to seek international aid, citizens started a ‘global call,’ which resulted in Croatia sending one, Spain two of their Canadair firefighting aero planes for help. The fires started a new political debate on why Turkey, which faces 2,000 forest fires a year, could not use its own firefighting planes.
Turkish Aeronautical Association (THK), which was founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1925, has seven Canadair CL-215 model aircraft, the same model as the Spanish and Croatian ones, kept unused at the university campus of the institution. Cenap Asci, who has been appointed as a trustee for THK in 2019 said USD 4m investment is needed to keep the fleet on the air. However, The Ministry of Forestry paid TRY 287m for the planes that THK has leased from Russia for the last two years. While the cost of two aircraft leased for 120 days in 2020 was TRY 84m, the contract value of the three aircraft leased for 153 days this year was TRY 203m.
The opposition thinks that the reason THK planes remain inactive is political. After an online meeting held yesterday, Mayors of 11 metropolitan municipalities from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have expressed their willingness to cover all of the maintenance and operating costs of firefighting planes belonging to the THK.
Waiting for the fires to stop having our mouths in our boots, lasting fire on the economy continue. Testing below 8.30 yesterday, USD/TRY changed its direction with purchases from this level and went above 8.40. As of this morning, the rate continues to trade above 8.40. The selling price of the EUR was determined as TRY 9.97.
DAILY AGENDA
The Central Bank will release the Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) for July (2.30 pm).
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