Treasury and Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati lashed out at the opposition bloc Monday ahead of a historic presidential runoff next weekend, stressing what he identified as a robust performance of the Turkish economy despite multiple challenges.
The runoff election will be held on May 28 after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fell just short of the 50% threshold needed to win the presidential vote outright on May 14.
Erdoğan will face Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the chair of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and joint candidate of the six-party opposition Nation Alliance. In the elections last Sunday, the Erdoğan-led People’s Alliance won a comfortable parliamentary majority.
Heading into the vote, the opposition tried to lure supporters by criticizing the government’s running of the economy, putting forward multiple claims, and weighing on its monetary policies, high inflation and volatility in the Turkish lira.
Nebati on Monday accused the opposition bloc of "systematically and hysterically attacking" the economy, calling it an "attempt to influence the election result."
He suggested that the bloc was trying to spread the idea that the economy would be problematic if Erdoğan were reelected.
"It is now necessary to bring these malicious vote hunters, these disaster preachers ... who pursue personal interests back to reality with the harsh slap of truth," Nebati wrote on Twitter.
The minister cited that the Turkish economy was among the few in the world to grow during the coronavirus pandemic, stressing challenges such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that fueled global commodity prices.
"After Türkiye’s strong growth of 11.4% in 2021, it managed to achieve a growth rate of 5.6% in 2022 when commodity prices skyrocketed worldwide due to the Russia-Ukraine War, surpassing many countries with this performance," Nebati said.
He emphasized employment in the country continued to increase steadily compared to many economies facing layoffs.
"Thanks to the policies we have implemented, our total employment reached 31.5 million people in March 2023 with an annual increase of 1.5 million people."
Türkiye has been grappling with high inflation, which has moderated over the last six months, a trend that the government says will continue in the coming period.
The inflation eased to an annual 43.68% in April, almost halving from 85.51% in October, a 24-year peak.
The economy has also seen a steep depreciation in the lira, which declined 44% in 2021 and lost 29% versus the U.S. dollar in 2022.
The currency fell 1% last week after holding mostly stable this year.
The country was lastly hit by devastating earthquakes that ripped through the southeastern region in early February, killing more than 50,000 people.
The tremors razed hundreds of thousands of buildings across 11 provinces, leaving many homeless and severely damaging the region’s infrastructure.
Despite the disaster, Nebati said industrial production grew by 0.4% in the first quarter of this year compared to the previous three-month period.
"This increase alone is a clear indicator of how solid our economy is," said Nebati. "Had the disaster of such scale occurred in any European country, would they have been able to achieve this success?"
The minister suggested the government achieved "one of the best budget performances in the last 20 years in 2022."
"Let there be no doubt that we will restore public finance indicators, especially budget and borrowing that will be somewhat affected by the earthquake, to their previous levels in a short period," Nebati noted.