Turkey is battling bankrupt ideologies that say the government must raise interest rates and tighten its finances to battle inflation and the current account deficit, said Cemil Ertem, senior economic adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

But people defending such policies are part of a lobby Turkey has pandered to over a number of years, Ertem said in a column for the Milliyet newspaper on Wednesday.

Paul Krugman was an economist who dared to break with tradition and talk about ways emerging markets could break away from the West’s influence and escape from high current account deficits by embracing modern technology as part of a national strategy, Ertem said.

South Korea and China have succeeded in breaking this cycle of reliance on Western imports and Turkey, with its own national strategy, is about to do the same, he said.

Economists say Turkey’s widening current account deficit, which rose to about 5.6 percent of economic output in January, and inflation of 10.3 percent, approximately three times the emerging-market average, presents a danger to the country’s economic stability and that the Turkish central bank should raise interest rates to get things under control.

Ertem is part of a team around Erdoğan that disagrees with this view, saying high interest rates are a cause of inflation, which is accelerating due to cost-push pressures and imperfect competition in the economy.

Moody’s last week cut Turkey’s debt rating to Ba2, two steps below investment grade, saying Turkey’s monetary policy was being compromised.