Turkey’s economy contracted by 9.9  per cent in the second quarter of the year from the previous three-month period in the wake of lockdown measures put in place to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, officials figures showed Monday. Though the quarterly decline in the April to June period reported by the Turkish Statistical Institute was the country’s biggest contraction in more than a decade, it was slightly less than economists had predicted. When the pandemic struck in March, the government imposed a number of restrictions to keep a lid on infections that inevitably hurt the economy. As well as shutting down some businesses, it imposed weekend curfews, closed borders and restricted domestic travel. Many of the restrictions were lifted in June.

Hopes that the economy would rebound strongly in the third quarter have faltered as tourism levels have been way lower than previous years. Turkey’s economy grew by 4.4  per cent in the first quarter.