Abdulmutalip Çiçek, a businessman from Turkey’s southern province of Gaziantep, on Friday filed a complaint against international credit rating firm Moody’s after the firm downgraded Turkey’s sovereign credit rating to “junk” status last week.
In a written statement for the media, Çiçek said he had submitted a complaint to the Gaziantep Public Prosecutor’s Office demanding that people who played a role in Moody’s downgrading of Turkey’s rating be prohibited from entering Turkey.
“Moody’s Investors Service has today downgraded the Government of Turkey’s long-term issuer and senior unsecured bond ratings to Ba1 from Baa3 and assigned a stable outlook,” a written statement from the company said on Sept. 24.
The agency based its decision on two factors: the increase in the risks related to the country’s sizeable external funding requirements, and the weakening in previously supportive credit fundamentals, particularly growth and institutional strength.
Lashing out Moody’s decision during a speech to village heads at the presidential palace in Ankara on Thursday, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said: “I love credit rating agencies; they love me, too. The CEO of an important company told me that “those rating agencies do not like you” during my visit to the US. They cut Turkey’s credit rating while I was on a plane to Turkey. Put 3-5 kuruş [a Turkish idiom for a bribe] in their [credit rating agencies] pocket and get the credit rating you want. They take orders for credit ratings.”