I don't want to act like Putin, Erdoğan tells businessmen

KAYSERİ - Anadolu Agency

Cihan Photo

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said he “doesn’t want to act like Russian President Vladimir Putin” in the economy, referring to a story that the latter once told him. 

“Putin met businesspeople who did not want to make any investments … He told me that he had urged them to invest and threatened to confiscate their assets if they did not. Putin invited one of the businessmen who had started to shake and made him sign the first deal. Only then did he let him go. We do not want to do this kind of thing,” Erdoğan said at a meeting with representatives from several non-governmental organizations in the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri on May 17. 

“We have laid the groundwork for doing business for our businesspeople, across Turkey’s entire 780,000 square meters,” he added. 

Erdoğan also said Anatolian businesspeople were no longer treated like provincial “Black Turks” by “White Turks” in big cities, using two colloquial terms to refer to Turkey’s long-running cultural divide.