ISTANBUL

Turkey's benchmark stock index started the day at 109,150.34 points on Thursday, down by 0.57%, or 628.60 points.

At Wednesday's close, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index was up 0.5% to 109,778.94 points, with a daily trading volume of 16.3 billion Turkish liras ($2.40 billion).

The US dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate dropped to 6.7870 as of 9:30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) Thursday, compared to 6.7910 at Wednesday's close.

The euro/Turkish lira exchange rate also fell to 7.7070 from 7.7190, while one British pound traded for 8.6270 Turkish liras, down sharply from 8.6880 at the previous close.

One barrel of Brent crude oil sold for around $40.35 as of 10:00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) on Thursday.