Resenting austerity, Turks want no new IMF deal

By Hatice Aydogdu and Selcuk Gokoluk

ANKARA (Reuters) - Consensus is rare in Turkey, but no one seems to like the IMF.

With the country due to end its loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund on Saturday, a view is building that after 19 standby agreements since 1961, it is time Turkey cut the ties and stood on its own economic feet.

"The IMF forced Turkey to sell its profit-making banks. Soon there will be nothing to sell. What will we leave to our children?" said Mustafa Koc, 47, standing in front of dozens of Turkish flags which he sells in Ankara's central Kizilay area.

Students, trade unionists, civil servants and even businessmen are asserting that the fund's programmes have never been a real help, and with inflation in single digits and growth averaging 6.8 percent in the last five years, they say Turkey no longer needs the IMF's rigors and disciplines.

"Turkey must go its separate way with the IMF and must certainly say 'no' to a new IMF deal," Ankara Chamber of Commerce Chairman Sinan Aygun told Reuters.

"Turkey needs to implement a programme which suits its conditions and serves its own interests. There are no countries which became rich implementing the IMF's economic programmes. They are all in poverty."

That view may be inaccurate -- the IMF has lent Turkey far more than its quota and rescued the country from crisis -- but it is growing at a time when the Fund, like some other post-war global institutions, faces broad challenges.

The institution which has handed out billions of dollars to rescue developing nations from economic peril has long grappled with its changing role, as financial crises have declined and fewer countries have turned to it.