Turkey's Borsa Istanbul down at opening

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark index started Thursday with a 288.68-point decrease to open at 89,196.22.

During the fourth transactions of the week, the BIST 100 index declined by 0.32 percent.

The banking and holding sector indices went down 0.42 percent and 0.10 percent, respectively.

Among all sectors, the tourism sector index was the best performer -- up 0.63 percent -- while the communication index started the day with the biggest decline, falling 0.73 percent.

At Wednesday's closing session, the benchmark index was down 1,328.71 points or 1.46 percent to close at 89,484.90 points, with a total trading volume of 4.8 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.28 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate rose to 3.7480 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Thursday, compared with 3.7320 at Wednesday's close.