Turkey : $128 billion waste opens corruption files for Erdogan’s party

The corruption files of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party are exposed day after day, the latest of which, according to the country’s opposition, is Erdoğan’s waste of $128 billion from the state budget as gifts and rewards to members of his party; in return for their efforts to work for him and ensure their loyalty to him, ignoring the difficult living conditions of Turks.

In a failed attempt to get out of the crisis, the Turkish president launched two contradictory accounts about the fate of the $128 billion, the first being that these funds were spent to address the coronavirus pandemic, in the form of support for the affected sectors in the country, and the second, saying that the $128 billion is in the Central Bank of Turkey as is, within the foreign exchange reserves, claiming that the foreign currency reserves in Turkey started to recover once again.

The Central Bank of Turkey spent huge amounts of money in foreign currency during the two years that Berrat Albayrak, the president’s son-in-law, was in charge of supporting the local currency, after the Turkish lira lost much of its value against foreign currencies and inflation rose dramatically.

The demands to find out the fate of the money lost, or spent as gifts by Erdoğan to the members of the Justice and Development Party, come at the same time as the economic conditions of the Turks, especially following the negative economic repercussions of the Coronavirus pandemic, which the Erdoğan regime has neglected to support the state-affected sectors, despite wasting their people’s money on its edge. Where is the $128 billion? (#128BillionNered), Turkey’s trending on the microblogging site Twitter, against the backdrop of the ongoing controversy in Turkey, over the loss of the Turkish Central Bank Treasury of $128 billion in foreign exchange, during the tenure of former Finance Minister Berat Albayrak and Erdogan’s son-in-law.

For his part, former Turkish Central Bank President Durman Yilmaz and former Vice President of the Bank Ibrahim Turhan called for an investigation to determine the fate of the $128 billion spent from the treasury without disclosing its expenditures, and the exchange rate applied during the sale operations. The Republican People’s Party, the largest opposition party in the country, also accused the ruling regime of wasting $128 billion, confirming that the crises in Turkey began to appear to a large extent after the presidential system implemented the one-man dictatorship in 2018.

As for the Turkish opposition Al-Khair Party, it has published banners and posters in a number of cities and neighborhoods across Turkey bearing the phrase where is the $128 billion, and equipped 10 thousand facepiece with the same phrase, for distribution to the citizens. Those posters and banners about the fate of the $128 billion have resulted in the confusion of the Erdogan regime, as the Turkish President ordered a security alert and the removal of banners spread throughout Turkey of the fate of the billions that were missing, with immediate effect.

The Turkish parliament, which is controlled by the ruling Justice and Development Party, also rejected an inquiry by the opposition Republican People’s Party into the fate of the money, as well as Turkish troops raiding headquarters to remove posters and banners.

“In April 2020, a World Bank report revealed that nearly 14% of Turks were living below the poverty line, estimated at $4.3 per day per person, with Erdogan’s income-constrained population below the poverty line as inflation and the value of the Turkish lira continued to fall.”