Ali Müfit Gürtuna, a former mayor of İstanbul, has said he took over the municipality from his predecessor and current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan burdened by a huge debt amounting to $1.5 million, in the wake of a recent call from Erdoğan targeting opposition municipalities over their debts.
Erdoğan served as the mayor of İstanbul between 1994 and 1998.
Gürtuna, who spoke to the TELE1 news website, said the İstanbul Municipality had a debt of $1.5 million when he took over it from Erdoğan and that he was paying off the city’s debt until the end of his term in 2004.
He said the mayors whose party has the majority in the city council accumulate a large amount of debt and leave it to their successor, putting the new mayor in a financial bind and unable to afford their own projects.
The former mayor’s remarks came in the wake of a Wednesday call from Erdoğan, who targeted opposition municipalities over their debts, saying the finance ministry is working on a plan to collect the debts and that they will not be allowed to waste the public’s money.
His call has been interpreted as an attempt to exert financial pressure on opposition municipalities to hinder their operations and discredit them in the eyes of the public in retaliation for his party’s loss in the March 31 local elections.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) emerged as the leading party for the first time in 47 years in the local elections, securing 37.7 percent of the vote, maintaining control of key cities and securing substantial gains in other regions, while Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came in second, garnering only 35.4 percent. It was the worst election defeat the AKP has suffered since its establishment in 2002.
Many expected that there would be some repercussions for the opposition-run municipalities due to the AKP’s election failure.
In a speech on Wednesday Erdoğan accused opposition mayors of not keeping their election promises and taking contrary steps, for instance dramatically increasing water rates or failing to improve the welfare of pensioners.
He suggested that opposition municipalities can help pensioners by paying off their debts to the government, for instance to the Social Security Institution (SGK).
Following Erdoğan’s call, Labor Minister Vedat Işıkhan announced on Thursday that municipalities have already been notified of the amount of their debt.
Işıkhan said his ministry made a call to the municipalities to pay off their debts to the SGK before the March 31 elections and then sent notifications to all the municipalities, no matter from which party, through the SGK.
He said some municipalities have complied with the ministry’s call and paid off their debts but said that many municipalities have not.
Işıkhan said the municipalities owe a debt of 96 billion lira ($2.9 billion) to the SGK for unpaid insurance premiums and that they should pay off their debt as soon as possible.
Former AKP mayors have faced accusations of leaving behind large debts after the March 31 elections.
In many municipalities where the mayorship was transferred from the AKP and its far-right ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), to the other parties, the new mayors have revealed the municipalities’ debts and the lavish spending during the tenure of the former mayors.
The new mayors accused the former AKP and MHP mayors of squandering the public’s money given the fact that even many district municipalities, with populations not reaching 100,000, have debts amounting to millions of lira.
Erdoğan’s remarks about debt collection from municipalities attracted a harsh response from CHP leader Özgür Özel later on Wednesday, accusing him of trying to stage a “financial coup” against opposition municipalities.
Özel said Erdoğan should first question which AKP municipalities paid their debts to the SGK since none of the municipalities they took over from the AKP in the local elections has repaid any debts to the SGK in the last five years.
Three metropolitan municipalities of Bursa, Balıkesir and Denizli, which were taken over by the CHP from the AKP in the local elections, had an accumulated debt of 789.8 million lira to the SGK from the time of AKP rule in these provinces, the Birgün daily reported on Thursday, citing data from the Court of Accounts.