Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is angry at his finance minister for the government's failure to achieve its goal of appreciating the lira at the start of the New Year, writes columnist Erdal Saglam.

Earlier this month, Erdogan announced that the lira would rise in value, repeating the forecast made by recently appointed Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati. The goal was to raise the lira to around 11.5 per dollar, Saglam writes in a column published by Deutsche Welle.

Now Erdogan is outraged that the finance ministry and the central bank are constantly revising their targets to lower the value of the lira. They are currently finding it difficult to keep the currency above 14 per dollar.

Erdogan is also outraged that his government has failed to persuade Turkish citizens to sell foreign currency in deposit accounts, Saglam said.

To reverse a slump in the lira’s value, on Dec. 20 the president announced a scheme to link lira bank deposits to the dollar. The lira rallied from a record low of 18.36 per dollar to as strong as 10.15 per dollar the same week.

But Turks who receive income in liras are still buying dollars and, meanwhile, interference by the central bank in the foreign exchange market continues, despite its net foreign currency reserves declining to minus $56 billion, he said. The situation is unsustainable, one banker said, according to Saglam.

Another measure introduced by the government in early January also failed to strengthen the lira exchange rate. Exporters are required to sell 25 percent of their foreign currency earnings to the central bank in exchange for lira.

The latest measure is failing because exporters now have to buy back at least 80 to 90 percent of the foreign currency they sold to the central bank in the open market, Saglam said, quoting one banker.