In Turkey, several investment funds that had attracted hundreds of thousands of savers are now unable to meet their withdrawal requests. The government has ordered the liquidation of 131 funds in an attempt to prevent further destabilization of the Istanbul Stock Exchange. Around 455,000 Turkish savers are anxiously following every announcement from financial authorities, waiting to find out how much of their savings they will be able to recover, even though they are already aware they will likely have to give up most of it. For a long time, part of the opposition, the press, and analysts had criticized the lack of transparency and potential fraud in Turkish financial markets. Gradually, these concerns spread to foreign investors, and Turkey risked being excluded from the MSCI, the global benchmark index for emerging market stocks. To prevent this, the SPK, Turkey's market watchdog, introduced new regulations that have accelerated the collapse of questionable investment funds. The full extent of the damage is still difficult to assess, but by mid-September, "in just two days, the scandal caused the market to lose around 30 billion dollars [26.3 billion euros]," according to The Economist. According to BBC Türkçe, the fund managers had artificially inflated the prices of certain stocks they held in an absurd manner, with increases reaching up to 60,000 percent over three years. These seemingly incredible returns attracted small investors, lured by the apparent profitability.