A market manipulation scandal is continuing to rock Turkey, with the country's emerging market status coming under threat and the country's listed companies now at risk of being frozen out of global indexes.
Allegations began swirling in the fourth quarter of 2025 that investment management firms were artificially inflating stock prices by piling into small, illiquid listed companies with low free float rates.
Turkey's Capital Markets Board (SPK) later said the investments in the stocks "could not be explained by economic realities or by the financial fundamentals of the companies concerned."
In September, Pusula Portföy became the first asset manager to report a fund default, with rival Tera Portföy saying in the following days that two of its funds had also defaulted.
Turkey's benchmark BIST 100 stock index plummeted 16.7% in the month of September.