Turkey’s main opposition has mounted an emphatic campaign calling the government to account on why the central bank burnt through $128 billion in foreign reserves in “back-door” hard currency sales that began in early 2019, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law presided over the economy.
The campaign has forced Erdogan on the defensive, raising a slew of questions about the legality of the sales and who benefitted the most from them.
The Turkish newspaper Zaman quoted Republican People’s Party (KNP) Vice President Faik Oztrak as confirming that the Central Bank of Turkey’s documents on its official website do not contain any documents describing how the bank’s treasury received $ 128 billion, a question first asked by the leader. CHP Kemal Kilicdar Ihsanoglu.
It quotes Oztrak as saying: “It doesn’t matter how $ 128 billion was wasted, but now the question is how did that money come out of the treasury of the Central Bank of Turkey?”
And the vice president of the Turkish Republican People’s Party continued, according to the source, stressing the need to “know what was sold, how $ 128 billion was sold, and why and to whom it was sold?” I look at the central website of the bank, and I believe that interventions made in foreign currency are written one after another … but there is not a single record of $ 128 billion, there is no transparency. “
In connection with Erdogan’s praise of his son-in-law Albayrak, he attributed to Oztrak the words: “He always decorates Albayrak. I wonder if it was good, why did you change it? Why did you bring in a new administration .. Why did you need it? .. Why did you change the head of the Central Bank? .. All these questions need to be answered. “
The Zaman newspaper noted that the Central Bank of Turkey “spent huge sums in two years when Berat Albayrak took over as finance minister to support the local currency after the Turkish lira lost much of its value against foreign currencies and inflation sharply. increased “.
The Turkish opposition newspaper, citing “experts and bank sources”, cited “an unjustified” reduction over the past two years, “about $ 140 billion in net reserves of the Central Bank of Turkey, and these funds were implicitly used to limit growth in exchange rates.”
In this context, it was reported that Turkey ranked first in the world in 2020 in terms of reducing the foreign exchange reserves of the central bank, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The newspaper accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of “a recent attempt to demonstrate a huge balance of foreign exchange reserves in the Central Bank of Turkey”.
In an attempt to deceive his supporters during the seventh periodic conference of the Justice and Development Party in Izmir, Erdogan said that the foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank of Turkey reached $ 95 billion, after they were estimated at $ 27.5 billion once the Justice Party and Development (AKP) will come to power. “
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