Erdoğan prepares to tackle opposition-run municipalities fiscally

Duvar English

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on July 24 announced his new move to tackle the opposition-run municipalities fiscally.

Speaking at the parliamentary group meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP), Erdoğan said the Treasury and Finance Ministry will start collecting the debts of municipalities.

“If you want to benefit pensioners, instruct your municipalities to pay their accumulated debts to the (state-run) Social Security Institution. It is easy to say 'We will give free tractors' to voters. Our Treasury and Finance Ministry will start collecting the municipalities’ debts from now on,” Erdoğan said.

Erdoğan also called on main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Özgür Özel and said, “Tell your mayors to reduce the prices of the services they promised to provide free of charge but raised 3-4 times in three months.”

The CHP holds 14 metropolitan provincial, 21 provincial, 337 district, and 48 central district municipalities, surpassing the AKP in the first two categories.

Therefore, the move is regarded as Erdoğan’s new move to weaken the opposition-run municipalities. 

Most of the CHP-run municipalities have been implementing several social policies in the face of detrimental economic crisis, such as municipal restaurants. Started by the Istanbul Municipality under Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu with the name of "Kent Lokantası" ("City Restaurant"), these restaurants provide much cheaper meals to citizens than normal restaurants.

In response to Erdoğan, CHP Group Deputy Chair Ali Mahir Başarır said these debts had been accumulated since 1999. “There are still debts from your (mayorship) in Istanbul that were postponed and forgiven,” Başarır said and added that Erdoğan is taking such an action because he lost the local elections.

Moreover, CHP leader Özel deemed the move a “financial coup.”

On July 24, Özel said in Istanbul, “If he does this and prevents us from serving, I will tell in every square how Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan resorted to this trick to take away the administrative competence of CHP out of fear that his incompetent administration will change. He cannot reduce inflation, he is trying to tie the hands of our municipalities so that we will not come to power, to impoverish the municipalities, to make them unable to pay salaries, to make them unable to collect garbage. Erdoğan should know that we will collect that garbage with our own hands, but we will not give in to his games and blackmail.”

“Instead of taking a little wisdom from the election results, learning and fulfilling the wishes of the citizens, he is being stubborn and preventing us from serving. Citizens see these. What it was to deprive Ekrem İmamoğlu, who was elected by the decision of the citizens in Istanbul last time (in 2019), is the same thing as confiscating the money of the elected mayors and preventing them from serving,” he added.