Turkey pledges to retrieve funds for half-million investors amid fund liquidation crisis

The Turkish government has made recovering the assets of nearly half a million investors its top agenda after the Capital Markets Board liquidated 131 funds linked to seven firms on September 17. Those funds held assets valued at more than 826 billion Turkish lira, representing the savings of over 455,000 people. Justice Minister Akın Gürlek told a YouTube interview from New York that authorities will retrieve money that was transferred and smuggled abroad, and prosecutors have opened cases against 63 individuals for organized crime and fraud.

The crisis began when the SPK issued new diversification rules on August 28, prompting fund managers to sell holdings and trigger panic withdrawals that led to defaults and a sharp fall in the Borsa İstanbul. Economist Murat Sağman warned that investors fully exposed to these funds could suffer severe losses. Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said the problem concerns only a small fraction of Turkey's 2,038 investment funds and that steps are being taken to protect savers.