Almost 60 percent of Turkish voters do not believe that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can fix the country’s economy, according to a survey by Turkish pollster Metropoll.
Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed answered negatively when asked: “Do you think Erdoğan can solve the economic problems?” Thirty-nine percent said they had confidence in his ability to turn the economy around.
Metropoll head Özer Sencar shared the survey on Twitter after the state statistics office said inflation soared to nearly 70 per cent in April. Skyrocketing prices are eating away at earnings, making it difficult for some Turkish consumers to purchase basic necessities such as food and electricity. Analysts blame the soaring prices on Erdogan’s unorthodox economic policies, which favour lowering interest rates despite faster inflation.
The Turkish central bank cut interest rates by 5 percentage points to 14 percent between September and December. It has paused them since the beginning of the year. The Turkish lira lost 44 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar in 2021 as many investors and local deposit holders lost confidence in the government’s policies.
Over 90 percent of the supporters of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), the centre-right nationalist Good Party (İP), and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said they did not believe Erdoğan could fix Turkey’s economy.
This figure dropped to 8.8 percent among backers of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and 26.3 percent among supporters of the AKP’s allies, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Metropoll said.
Over half of those surveyed said they did not believe that opposition parties could mend Turkey’s economy either.
Turkey’s next parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled for June 2023.
Erdoğan’s approval rating dropped in the month of April, after showing slight improvement the previous month. A total of 42.1 percent of voters approve of Erdoğan’s performance as president, according to the survey by Metropoll.
Almost three-quarters of Turks do not believe official inflation data, Metropoll said in the survey. It said 58.1 percent of AKP voters believed the numbers.
Some independent assessments of prices in Turkey estimate that annual changes are exceeding 100 percent. Inflation accelerated to 156.9 percent last month, the ENAGGroup, an Istanbul-based research group set up by Turkish academics to calculate inflation, said on Thursday, when the official data was released.
Source: Ahval News