The Islamist policies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have done immense damage to the polity and economy of Turkey.
Under the leadership of the Islamist president, Turkey is now urging its citizens to cut meat consumption to check inflation and save the shrinking economy.
“Instead of eating 1-2 kilos of meat monthly, let’s eat half a kilo. We buy 2 kilos of tomatoes and half of them go to the trash. Well, let’s get 2 tomatoes,” said Turkish lawmaker Zülfü Demirbağ, who belongs to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice & Development (AKP) party.
Erdoğan’s policies, which have president since 2014, have caused immense damage to the polity and economy of Turkey.
The inflation in Turkey is almost 20 per cent, making food and daily use items nearly out of reach for ordinary Turkish people. Its currency, Lira, has lost more than 40 per cent value this year.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the President of Turkey since 2014. Earlier, he served as Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as Mayor of Istanbul, the most popular city of Turkey, from 1994 to 1998.
Erdoğan has been selling the dream of the Ottoman Empire and Islamic Caliphate to Muslims around the world. In October this year, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) put Turkey on its Grey List. The countries on FATF’s Grey List are under watch for money laundering and terror financing.
In August last year, Erdoğan ordered the ancient Orthodox church, which became a mosque and then a famous Istanbul museum, to be turned into a mosque again.
The decision to transform the Kariye Museum into a mosque came just a month after the forceful conversion of the UNESCO World Heritage-recognised Hagia Sophia into a mosque.
Erdoğan has been pursuing the Islamist agenda to run Turkey. The president’s inflation policies, which give economists nightmares, are guided by Islamic principles where charging interest rates is prohibited.
Despite skyrocketing inflation, Turkey reduced its ‘repo rate’ from 19 per cent in March to 15 per cent in November this year.
With a population of about 8.5 crores and 99 per cent Muslims, Turkey had earlier persuaded Pakistan to shun its traditional allies, Saudi Arabia and UAE, in its favour.
