Turkey’s finance minister was met with a protest in Parliament on Thursday from opposition party lawmakers who hold him responsible for economic deterioration in the country, the Evrensel news website reported.
When Şimşek arrived at a meeting of Parliament’s Planning and Budget Commission, where discussions are being held about the 2025 state budget, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) lawmakers, such as Tahsin Ocaklı, Cevdet Akay and Veli Ağbaba, greeted him with banners that illustrated Turkey’s poor performance on some economic indicators.
Some of the banners read, “Turkey ranks first in Europe in inflation,” “Turkey ranks first in the world in high interest rates” and “Turkey ranks first in Europe in food inflation.”
Turkey has been grappling with a deepening cost-of-living crisis marked by high inflation and a depreciating currency for several years.
The country’s poor have been hit the hardest by economic deterioration that saw the official annual inflation rate reach a decades-long high of 85 percent in October of 2022, according to official figures. The rate then fell, but it remains a significant concern. It stood at 48.6 percent in October, slowing less than anticipated, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) showed on November 11.
During the protest, Ocaklı tried to gift Şimşek an abacus, telling him to give it to the TurkStat officials so that they can accurately calculate economic indicators like the inflation level.
Many accuse TurkStat of under-reporting inflation to downplay economic hardship. The institute’s credibility has been questioned, particularly after ENAG, an independent group of economists, has consistently reported rates of inflation that are often double those released by TurkStat.
Akay also complained about TurkStat’s withholding of detailed item prices, which it has failed to reveal since May 2022, despite criticism.
“Why are you allowing the people to be compressed by [high] inflation,” Akay asked Şimşek, who seemed indifferent to the protesting lawmakers.
Critics argue that withholding item prices undermines transparency and erodes public trust. Opposition parties and independent economists contend that official inflation rates fail to capture the economic reality experienced by Turkish citizens.
Soaring consumer prices and the cost-of-living crisis prompted President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to drop his opposition to interest rate hikes to combat inflation after appointing Şimşek, a former minister and Merrill Lynch economist, as finance minister after his reelection as president in May 2023.
Şimşek and his team have been implementing an economic program aimed at reducing inflation and bringing economic stability. The opposition accuses Şimşek of failure.
Under the new economic program, Turkey’s central bank began to raise its key rate in June 2023, gradually taking it from 8.5 percent to 50 percent.
Due to a less-than expected decrease in inflation figures, the central bank last week had to raise its inflation forecast for this year and the next.
The central bank now sees inflation reaching 44 percent at the end of 2024, up from a previous estimate in August of 38 percent.