2023-05-29 06:19:14
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was re-elected on Sunday, May 28, at the head of Turkey, a country in the grip of a serious economic crisis and at the heart of many tensions with its allies. Here are some of the priority files awaiting the réis.
Read also With 52.16% of the vote, Recep Tayyip Erdogan re-elected as head of Turkey
More than a priority, it will be an emergency to relieve a breathless population: official inflation remained in April at over 40 % over one year after having exceeded 85% in the autumn, the result of a regular drop in interest rates desired by President Erdogan.
Between August and February, the main key rate was lowered from 14% to 8.5%, cuts justified by the central bank by the desire to support “employment and industrial production”. Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserts, contrary to classical economic theories, that high interest rates encourage inflation and he indicated during his campaign that he had no intention of raising them.
The Turkish lira has lost more than half its value in two years and reached 20 pounds to the dollar this week. According to official data, Ankara spent 25 billion dollars in a month to support it. But its collapse seems inevitable. Especially since foreign currency reserves have gone into the red for the first time since 2002.
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Post-earthquake reconstruction
The 7.8 magnitude earthquakes of February 6 devastated entire areas of southeastern Turkey, leaving at least 50,000 dead and more than three million displaced. President Erdogan has promised to rebuild 650,000 homes in the affected provinces as soon as possible. The total cost of the damage of the disaster amounts to more than 100 billion dollars according to the UN and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Read also After the earthquake, reconstruction at the heart of the Turkish elections
Turkey’s allies within theI’ll take it are waiting for Ankara to lift its veto at the entrance to the Sweden in the Atlantic Alliance, blocked since May 2022.
While Stockholm has multiplied goodwill gestures, including the adoption in early May of a new anti-terrorism law, Turkey – like Hungary – has remained inflexible, continuing to demand the extradition of dozens of opponents presented as Kurdish “terrorists” or from the movement of the Turkish preacher in exile Fethullah Gülen, whom Ankara accuses of being behind the coup attempt of July 2016.
NATO foreign ministers are to meet on Tuesday in Oslo, before the summit of heads of state in July in Vilnius, who expect good news.
The Turkish veto against the Finland was however lifted at the beginning of April. The two Nordic countries, traditionally neutral, had applied for membership after the Russian aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, feeling vulnerable in the face of their powerful neighbor.
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Reconciliation with Syria
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tried in recent months to get closer to his neighbor, the Syrian president, Bachar al-Assad, but despite Russian mediation, his attempts were unsuccessful. Bashar al-Assad demanded, prior to any meeting with his counterpart, the withdrawal of the Turkish forces stationed in the north of the Syria under rebel control and the end of Ankara’s support for rebel groups opposed to Damascus.
Turkey, which has launched several incursions against jihadist and Kurdish groups in Syrian territory since 2016, welcomes 3.4 million Syrian refugees who fled the war on its soil.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in early May the construction of 200,000 homes on thirteen sites in northern Syria to allow the “voluntary” return of at least one million people.
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