ISTANBUL: The Turkish lira traded near a record lows on Monday as nervous investors reacted to the prospects of a minority or coalition government after the ruling AK Party failed to win a majority in a parliamentary election.
The lira, already one of the worst performing emerging market currencies this year, hit a record low in out-of-hours trade on Sunday, after results showed the AKP had taken just short of 41 percent of the vote.
The result is likely to leave it struggling to form a stable government for the first time since it came to power more than a decade ago.
"This is definitely the most uncertain of outcomes. It does open up the prospect of an early election and potentially there will be more friction in the AK Party," said Manik Narain, an emerging market strategist at UBS.
Investors had expected the AK Party to secure enough support to be able to form a single-party majority government.
By 0454 GMT, the lira stood at 2.7770 to the dollar, tumbling from 2.6615 on Friday, but off a low of 2.799 that was hit in thin overnight trading when it was almost 5 percent down.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.