By Muhammed Ali Gurtas </p> <p>ANKARA (AA) – Turkey's benchmark stock index started the week’s last business day up 0.24 percent or 245.71 points to open at 103,653.50 points on Friday.</p> <p>On Thursday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index was up 0.09 percent and closed the day at 103,407.79 points with a daily trading volume of 8.44 billion Turkish liras ($1.55 billion).</p> <p>The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate stood at 5.4700 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) Friday, compared to 5.4610 at the previous close. </p> <p>The euro/Turkish lira rate was 6.2280, versus 6.2330 at Thursday's close, and one British pound was exchanged for 7.2050 Turkish liras, compared to 7.2090.</p> <p>One barrel of Brent oil was sold for $67.90 as of 10 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Friday.
