Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MP and the vice co-chair of the HDP in charge of the Economy Commission, Garo Paylan organised a press conference in the Turkish parliament.
Paylan announced the report prepared by their commission entitled, “The economic report test of the one-man regime”.
Paylan announced that the economy report test of the one-man regime is marked as ‘zero’ by the HDP.
“In three years Turkey’s one-man regime economy has crashed upside down. What did the one-man regime do? It transferred Turkey’s resources to the palaces, wars and friends. The country’s economy was pulled down into a spiral of foreign currency, inflation and interest,” he said. “Therefore we can only give them a mark of zero.”
In contrast to the increasing wealth of the wealthy elite groups close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and his governing ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Paylan said the economy for the majority of the people shrank. “The burden of unemployment, poverty, debt and high cost of living fell on majority of our citizens,” he said.
Paylan pointed out that is not the economy of the working people, but of the allies and elites close to Erdoğan’s ruling party that has grown over the last three years.
“We, as the HDP travel across the country city by city, village by village and ask all of our fellow citizens: ‘Did you hear that Turkey’s economy has grown, Erdoğan says it is growing, has your economy grown?’ Not a single one of our citizens said, ‘My economy has grown’. Then whose economy has grown?” Paylan said and added: “The economy of a handful of cronies has grown.”
“But when we look at our 84 million citizens, the economy of the worker, of the state clerk, of the farmer, of the retired, their economy has shrunk.”
Garo Paylan shared the following warning as a final message: “The one-man regime causes the country’s economy to fail and as long as we cannot get rid of this one man regime, the economy will continue to bleed. He collects the taxes from our citizens and transfers these to those close to him. If he is able to maintain his power for two more years, this economic cycle revolving by collecting taxes from our citizens and transferred to Erdogan’s cronies will continue to revolve. What we need to do is to break this cycle.”
