Amid fears that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan might take measures and exert financial pressure on opposition-run municipalities to prevent them from providing municipal services following his party’s election loss in March, the president has announced that the finance ministry is working on a plan to collect debts owed by the municipalities, a move likely targeting opposition-run cities.
His remarks came during a meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Wednesday.
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, securing 37.7 percent of the vote, maintaining control of key cities and securing substantial gains in other regions, while the AKP came in second, garnering only 35.4 percent.
The CHP’s election victory has led to concerns that Erdoğan might resort to measures that will hinder operations of the opposition municipalities or discredit them in the eyes of the public in retaliation for his party’s election loss.
In his 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.
“If you want to do a favor for pensioners, ask your municipalities to pay off their accumulated debt to the SGK [Social Security Institution]. It’s easy to make promises at election rallies. The difficult thing is keeping one’s promises. Our treasury and finance ministry is going to begin to collect the municipalities’ debts,” Erdoğan said, adding that his government will not allow them to waste the public’s money.
According to Erdoğan, what opposition parties understand from municipal services is to organize “waltz and dance shows,” accusing them of incompetence, a lack of skill and bigotry.
‘Financial coup’
Erdoğan’s remarks attracted criticism from the CHP, with party leader Özgür Özel accusing him of trying to stage a “financial coup” against opposition municipalities.
He told reporters in İstanbul later on Wednesday that 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.
“Now, he is going to collect from us the debts that they [AKP mayors] did not pay. These are cheap moves,” said Özel, warning that he will go out into the streets and organize rallies to tell people about it if Erdoğan makes such a move.
CHP deputy group chairman Ali Mahir Başarır was also unsettled by Erdoğan’s remarks and accused him of resorting to such measures as debt collection due to his inability to accept his party’s “great defeat” at the polls.
Başarır said at a news conference in parliament that the debts of some municipalities have accumulated for years under the rule of AKP mayors and asked the president why he was not eager to collect them when his party’s mayors were in power.
Başarır said the İstanbul Municipality even has debts dating back to Erdoğan’s time as mayor between 1994 and 1998.
Erdoğan was hoping to win back the İstanbul Municipality from the CHP in the March 31 elections, but the CHP’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, seen as the biggest political rival of Erdoğan, was able to win re-election by a wide margin against the AKP candidate, which came as a huge disappointment to Erdoğan.
“You are doomed to lose from now on, too, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Because you have never acted as president of the 85 million people in Turkey and you have no intention of ever doing that,” Başarır said, adding that Erdoğan wants to punish the people in the provinces who did not elect AKP candidates.
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 CHP and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), 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.
President Erdoğan and AKP politicians frequently attract criticism for wasting taxpayers’ money due to their lavish spending and luxurious lifestyles at a time of increased poverty in the country.
Many link the party’s loss of support in the elections to its waste of the country’s resources amid skyrocketing inflation and a constant decline in the people’s purchasing power.