In reaction to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s call for the nation to sell off foreign currency to prevent further depreciation of the Turkish lira, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on Saturday urged Erdoğan to repatriate his money from abroad, adding that nobody knows how much money Erdoğan and his children actually have.
Kılıçdaroğlu said Erdoğan had converted $200,000 into lira after the CHP’s call. “We still do not know much money in dollars he and his children have because we heard how his son Bilal got rid of 30 million euros,” Kılıçdaroğlu said in reference to leaked phone recordings between Erdoğan and his son Bilal on Dec. 17, 2013, the date a corruption investigation implicating Erdoğan’s government emerged to public view.
Kılıçdaroğlu also urged Erdoğan to call on wealthy businesspeople close to him to convert foreign holdings into Turkish lira. In response to a question as to his own savings in dollars, Kılıçdaroğlu said he had never owned a foreign exchange account due to his trust in the Turkish currency.
During his conversation on Saturday with shopkeepers in İstanbul, a citizen told Kılçdaroğlu that he has a dollar bill. In response Kılıçdaroğlu said it could be dangerous since several people in Turkey have been arrested for having dollar bills. The Turkish government claims that dollar bills are an encrypted messaging system among followers of the Gülen movement, which is accused of masterminding a failed coup in Turkey on July 15.