Turkey’s main opposition party has claimed that the country’s unemployment rate was around 17 percent in December, instead of the 13.7 percent that was announced by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat), accusing the government of manipulating the data, the Diken news website reported.
Aykut Erdoğdu, deputy chairman of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), told reporters on Tuesday that the number of unemployed in Turkey has reached 5.8 million.
TurkStat reported on Tuesday, however, the number was around 4.4 million in December.
“You can fool the public with these enhanced numbers, but you can’t offer a solid policy to tackle the unemployment,” Erdoğdu said.
The Turkish economy rebounded strongly in the fourth quarter from a recession triggered by a currency crisis in 2018.
The crisis also led to a jump in unemployment to a 10-year high of 14.7 percent in the first quarter of last year. Since then it has dipped a bit but remained elevated, according to the official numbers.