Turkey's Borsa Istanbul starts week looking up

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index rose by 0.18 percent or 172.59 points to open at 98,627.47 points on Monday.

On Friday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index rose 1.69 percent to close the week at 98,454.88 points with a daily trading volume of 7.7 billion Turkish liras ($1.44 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate fell to 5.3380 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT), compared with the last week's closing rate of 5.3570.

The euro/lira rate also dropped to 6.0800, versus 6.1060 at the last close. One British pound traded for 6.8920 Turkish liras, as the GBP/TRY rate was 6.9450 by market close on Friday.

The price of Brent oil increased to around $62.80 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Monday, versus $62.39 at the previous close.