AKP district municipality spends 1.7 million liras for wall clocks
A district municipality run by the ruling AKP in the southeastern province of Gaziantep spent 1.7 million liras for wall clocks while citizens are struggling with poverty.
Duvar English
The municipality of Şehitkâmil district in the southeastern province of Gaziantep initiated a tender named “Wall Clock Purchase” on Dec. 14, 2021. Only one person put a bid down and won it with the price of 1.7 million Turkish Liras. The municipality purchased 25,000 wall clocks with their logo on it, according to reporting by daily Birgün.
The Şehitkâmil Municipality had purchased wall clocks with their logo again for 376,000 liras five months ago.
Many other expenditures of the same municipality are also controversial. They bought a total of 1.5 million liras worth of carpets to be installed in mosques and social facilities in 2018 and 2020.
The municipality had also purchased "balls" for 78,000 liras in 2019.
The municipality was again on the agenda when it had paid 300,000 liras in May 2021 for the purchase of the book written by columnist Yaşar Değirmenci who writes at pro-government daily Yeni Akit.
The AKP got 53,48 percent of the total votes in the district during the local elections in 2019.
The controversial purchases came as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently warned AKP mayors against wasting the country's resources, undertaking pompous spending and being arrogant, amid a wave of lavish consumption practices by the party.
Although the AKP has been conducting anti-waste campaigns nationwide, the party is known to be putting Turkey's resources to waste and undertaking lavish spending.