Good Party slams gov’t over economic management

Meral Akşener, the chairwoman of the oppositional Good (İYİ) Party, has slammed the government's economy management that deepened wide-spread poverty through a surge in inflation.

"This government has nothing left to deliver. They are just repeating themselves. 'We are starting a new era, this is a new rise,' [President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] keeps saying nowadays. But wasn't it you saying this in 2018 as well?" Akşener said in her address to her parliamentary group on April 5.

"Is this country obliged to live with your defeat? Is Türkiye obliged to observe your ineptitude [in running the country]?" she said. Akşener recalled that Erdoğan demanded votes from the people in 2018 to allow a new rise in Türkiye's history both economically and democratically but the point he arrived is a big failure.

"You blamed the parliamentary system for earlier failures and asked the support for the presidential system," she recalled, criticizing the government for imposing unwise and unscientific policies, especially regarding economy.

"Last year, you were promising that the budget would generate current account surplus. But what we had is a record current account deficit in Türkiye's history. Türkiye's foreign trade deficit hit $26 billion in only two months," she said.

The economic policies did surge inflation and made life very difficult for millions of the Turkish people, Akşener said, promising to recover the economy through wise policies when they come to power in the May polls.