In this regard, every central bank all around the world is concentrating on developing new tools and stress tests for assessing financial stability. They are reorganizing themselves in order to directly and effectively monitor financial stability and to develop new analysis techniques regardless of whether a central bank is also the supervisory authority or not. Financial stability from the Turkish perspective… If we consider the last two decades of the Turkish economy, we can say that Turkey learned its lesson very well by actually going through several crises and economic downturns. Thus, we now are aware of how important it is to have a sound financial system, which is resilient to potential shocks. The distortions in the banking sector and weak institutional structure of the financial system led to important systemic risks in the Turkish economy making it impossible for the economy to survive without financial sector reforms taking place. Therefore, the restructuring program for the financial sector was launched with the goal of eliminating the distortions in the financial sector, improving its intermediary function and thus enhancing its competitiveness by international standards. Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency has become operational as a separate body to improve the banking supervision. The Banks Act was amended to bring the supervision standards in line with the EU directives and international best practices. Moreover, the Central Bank Law has been amended and instrumental independence of the Central Bank was provided and the primary goal of the Bank was determined to be maintaining the price stability.

I am sure you will all agree with me when I say, in today’s integrated markets when any country catches a cold there will be many others sneezing. In such an environment we are now increasingly aware of contagion risk. Financial security and financial stability… Within this framework, I would like to emphasize the close linkage between financial security and financial stability. In my opinion, financial security can be enhanced by the existence of a smoothly operating infrastructure. This actually is a comprehensive concept and includes the payment system, the technological infrastructure, as well as the regulatory and supervisory framework. Overseeing the payments system is an essential duty of the central banks. In this respect, a basic continuing responsibility of any central bank is to assure stable and smoothly functioning payment  2  BIS Review 76/2007  systems. Linked to this is the lender of last resort function of the central banks. Emergency liquidity assistance, perhaps the most traditional function for dealing with financial instability, is a way out provided by central banks. Central banks can have a calming influence on markets in case of a market disruption simply by standing ready to provide liquidity assistance if necessary. It includes both the provision of liquidity to the financial system as a whole through market operations, as well as emergency lending to individual banks. Altogether these two important functions facilitate the security in the system. Technological infrastructure is another component to secure financial operations.