Global Courant 2023-04-11 22:01:54
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched his re-election campaign with a party pledge to cut inflation to the single digits and boost economic growth as he seeks to extend his two decades in power in the May 14 vote.
Erdogan faces the biggest political challenge since his Justice and Development Party (AK) came to power in 2002. Polls show that support has declined in recent years as the Turkish lira has plummeted in value and inflation has skyrocketed. Opponents blame the president’s economic policies.
Still, the president reiterated his economic mantra that investment, production, exports and any current account surplus would boost Turkey’s gross domestic product.
“We will bring inflation down to single digits and certainly save our country from this problem,” he told a crowd at a stadium in Ankara on Tuesday.
Erdogan sought aggressive interest rate cuts, which Turkey’s Central Bank enacted, propelled inflation to a 24-year high of more than 85 percent in October before falling to nearly 50 percent in March. The ensuing cost-of-living crisis has gripped Turkish households, straining incomes and savings, pushing people’s purchasing power to an all-time low.
“We will further enhance investment with a structure based on a free market economy integrated with the world,” the ruling party’s manifesto said. It aims for annual growth of 5.5 percent from 2024 to 2028 and a GDP of $1.5 trillion by the end of 2028. GDP was just over $1 trillion in 2022.
Erdogan said last week that a team was working to strengthen economic policy under the coordination of former finance minister Mehmet Simsek, who is highly respected by international investors.
Some AK Party members have previously said they want Simsek to advocate for a pivotal move towards more free-market policies after years of unorthodox economic strategies.
However, the manifesto made no direct reference to a return to orthodoxy, saying that low interest rate policies were the main driver for entrepreneurs investing in the real estate sector and creating jobs.
Kilicdaroglu leads in surveys
In next month’s presidential elections, Erdogan will run against the candidate for the main opposition alliance, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, and two other candidates.
In Metropoll’s latest survey, 42.6 percent of respondents said they would vote for Kilicdaroglu in the first round and 41.1 percent for Erdogan. The other candidates together received 7.2 percent support.
Support for Erdogan waned slightly after the February earthquakes, which killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey, as many voters felt the initial response to the disaster was too slow, according to surveys.
“We will completely heal the wounds caused by the disaster in 11 provinces and their neighboring cities by building a total of 650,000 new houses, of which 319,000 will be delivered in one year,” Erdogan said on Tuesday.
On foreign policy, the incumbent party said it would continue to normalize relations in the region. Ankara recently took steps to restore relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria after years of tension. Erdogan also said he wants to build an “axis of Turkey”.
“We will build Turkey’s axis with a foreign policy where both our country, our region and humanity will find peace and stability, multilateralism, increased cooperation, peace, stability and humanitarian diplomacy,” he said.
“We can negotiate with both sides in the war between Russia and Ukraine, make concrete progress, such as the grain corridor and the exchange of prisoners, and we can still talk about the possibility of peace,” Erdogan said.
