Turkish Party Leader: Presidential System Causing Economic Issues

Turkey's new presidential system has led to the country's current economic crisis, an opposition leader said on Wednesday.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the "freak" presidential system "are the reasons, and the current economic crisis and deepening poverty are a result," Meral Aksener, the leader of Good (IYI) Party, told her party's parliamentary group, punning on a favorite saying of the president.

She said that the current economic crisis in Turkey "went down in the history as a ruling crisis."

Turkey adopted its executive presidential system of government in 2017 through a public referendum, and put it into practice a year later.

Aksener repeated her call for the president to lead the country to early elections, a call he has consistently rejected.

"Our responsibility is great, our duty is holy, our road is tough," she said. "There will be traps on this road, we will not fall. There will be provocations on this road, we will be calm. There will be those who want to take to the streets, those who want to set the nation against each other, we will not let them do it.

"And when that inevitable day comes, whether they want it or not, we will bury this dirty mentality in the ballot box!" she said.

Under the Constitution, Turkey's next elections are due to be held in June 2023.

Turkey's opposition parties have blamed high inflation and a fall in the value of the Turkish lira on the president's push for low interest rates and what they call economic mismanagement.

In contrast, Erdogan has said the Central Bank sets rates independently and that double-digit inflation is the result of high interest rates.

Cutting interest rates, he has argued, is not only moral, it will spur economic growth, defeat inflation, and win Turkey's "war of economic liberation."

Amid losses in the value of the Turkish lira, the Central Bank on Tuesday released a statement decrying "unhealthy price formations" that are "unrealistic and completely detached from economic fundamentals."​​​​​​​ -