Erdoğan vows to launch social housing campaign

BURSA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has pledged to launch a social housing campaign aimed at addressing soaring housing and rental prices.

"We will take steps to make our citizens with fixed salaries homeowners," Erdoğan said on Dec. 28 during an event organized by his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the northwestern city of Bursa.

The president said newly married young couples would be prioritized in the program.

"We plan to launch a social housing campaign starting in the summer months," he said. "Thus, the bubble in housing and rental prices will start to deflate on its own."

The campaign's rollout will coincide with the anticipated completion of major reconstruction efforts in the earthquake-stricken southern regions of Türkiye, he added.

Erdoğan highlighted the role of housing costs in Türkiye's inflationary pressures.

"We are aware of every problem and every difficulty experienced," he said. "We know the troubles, demands, expectations and problems of every individual of our 85 million citizens very well."

The president also promised to reevaluate energy subsidies with a focus on benefiting those most in need.

"The main purpose of our economic program is to compensate for the welfare loss that our nation, especially those on fixed incomes, has suffered due to the exchange rate and inflation imbalance," Erdoğan said.

"For this, we need to eliminate issues such as inflation, which are used as an excuse for the high cost of living, first and foremost.”

The government plans to introduce new mechanisms to ensure basic necessities are delivered affordably, Erdoğan added.

“The priority of our program is to reduce inflation because it is the mother of all evils in our country as it is everywhere in the world,” he said.

“The arbitrary pricing habits of greedy opportunists, which cannot be explained by inflation, exchange rates or interest rates, make our job difficult. We will also overcome those who perceive the free market economy as a free-for-all and exploit it to the fullest."

Urging citizens to take a stand against unjustified price hikes, Erdoğan called for a boycott of overpriced goods and services.

“The price of an unsold product, an unused service, or a product with no buyers will no longer have any significance,” he said.