Magic Ice Museum opens in Istanbul - Istanbul's Forum Shopping Mall is now home to the world's first ice museum in a warm climate. The Magic Ice Museum, which opened Friday at a ceremony, was realized with an investment of $20 million by the Norwegian Lofoten Trading Company. As Istanbul readies for summer, one of the first permanent ice museums in a warm climate opened its doors April 23, set to be a cold “heaven” for those who want to escape the city’s heat. The inauguration of the Magic Ice Museum was attended by top officials from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, one of whom said the city is like an open-air museum with its 8,500 years of history. “The city served as the capital of three big cities. Despite this, the history of museums [in Istanbul] goes back only 165 years,” metropolitan municipality Vice President Ahmet Selamet said. “Despite its historical richness, the city could not take steps toward museum management in terms of both private and public enterprises.” The ice museum, opened in one of the city’s newest shopping malls, Forum Istanbul, was built by the Norwegian Lofoten Trading Company with an investment of $20 million. “Resources show that museum management is improved by private enterprises. But when we look at the development of museum management in Western countries, I have to say that what our private enterprises do for museums is not enough,” Selamet said.>>

Turkey is one of the fastest growing economies in OECD,The Turkish economy has grown steadily over the last 27 quarters with an average rate of 7%. This growth is expected to continue in coming years with a lower rate due to the global financial crisis. After the 2001 financial crisis, Turkey made important structural reforms which have led to improve her financial system. Therefore, Turkey is relatively less affected by the global crisis. Although nowadays Turkey has to deal with debts which mostly belong to private companies, effects of the global financial crisis to Turkey are not going to be an internal one on the most part, but it is going be an external one as less demand for exports. Also previous crisis experience of Turkish businessmen and economy officials make Turkey more resilient to the global financial crisis today. Being the commercial center of southeastern Europe, Middle East and Eurasia, Turkey is becoming an increasingly important economic and diplomatic country in the region. Between 2001 and 2007, Turkey’s GDP have increased by 242% totaling to USD 656.6 billion and she became the 15th largest economy in the world.>>

Monthly AT-A Glance : “The continued sound of records breaking…”

A non-friendly Mea Culpa?...Turkey has been hit hard by global recession, contracting by 4.7% in 2009, while unemployment levels hit an all-time-high of 16%. Yet Turkey has weathered the worst of the global recession, and is likely to approach pre-crisis growth levels in 2010. Indeed, the Turkish economy signaled the end of the recession in 4Q, registering a handsome 6% growth.

Given the fact that a handful of countries are raising rates, while others set aside monetary tightening for 3Q10, or are still pushing for a stimulus to support growth, we maintain our initial view that the CBT is unlikely to shift policy until early 2H10. We expect a rate hike totaling 150 bps in the second half of this year.

We stick to the annual strategy outlined in our annual report and remain positive on the Turkish bourse with our 5% growth outlook without IMF funding. Despite the strong performance of the stock market (up by 16% since the beginning of March, by 13% since year-end), Turkish equities are likely to test new highs in April. We believe that the CBT tightening is likely to put a temporary cap on the market’s strong performance in 2H10.>>