President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Tuesday the Turkish lira’s loss in value against foreign currencies was the result of plots and manipulation against Turkey, the T24 news website reported.
“Don’t pay any attention to those plots concerning foreign currencies. They’re manipulations against Turkey. We will settle old scores after the elections,” Erdoğan said during a rally in Sakarya province for upcoming polls on June 24.
Erdoğan tried to reassure the crowd that Turkey’s economy has improved during his 16 years in power and responded to opposition parties’ critical assessments of the economy.
“They say economy… We made Turkey into a country that has grown at a rate of 5.7 percent. They say economy… How much money did we owe the IMF [International Monetary Fund]? $23.5 billion. How much in 2018? Zero. Who did this? We did,” Erdoğan said.
In the first five months of 2018 the Turkish lira has lost 17 percent of its value.
Also, Turkey’s consumer price index (CPI) grew by 1.62 percent in May, raising inflation to 12.15 percent year-on-year, according to data released by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) on Monday.