Municipalities’ food stalls yielding results: Erdoğan

ARDAHAN

The food stalls of the municipalities, opened after price hikes in vegetables, gives positive results with 50 percent decrease in prices of these sales, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on March 1.

“The citizens are taken from the hands of food brokers. Prices decreased 50 percent in these municipality sales,” he said speaking at a rally in the eastern province of Ardahan.

If prices are regulated the municipalities will give up intervening, but if not, the government “will take different steps,” he said without elaborating on details of such measures.

“The exploiters will find no place in this country,” he added. “In such periods, even domestic capital refused to invest in our country,” Erdoğan stated.

He mentioned a conversation with a lawyer who complaint about excess of apples, almost 400,000 tons, which the producers was not able to sell despite low prices. Erdoğan said he offered to buy those apples for municipality sales.

He also criticized the Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu for his party’s objection to food stalls. Turkey’s democracy has strengthened in the last past 17 years, he said referring to the era of Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“Our brothership has been riveted more than ever. No provocation aimed at making our nation hostile has been successful,” he said adding that primarily eastern provinces of Turkey were able to receive state services many years after.

He suggested that the gap in development has diminished mostly during the rule of the AKP. The reason of this development is the AKP’s strategy of not making local policies according to the regions, but adopting a comprehensive approach.

“We have not been a political party that is limited to coast line as the CHP,” he said, stressing that has party has been receiving votes from entire Turkey. “Whatever we have done for the west, we did the same for the east as well,” he added.

The AKP is a party for Turks, Kurds, religious or secular, for young and elders, he said.

Elaborating on the investments that his government has carried on in Turkey, Erdoğan said the success of his alliance at the polls is important to sustain these investments.

Recalling criticism of Kılıçdaroğlu that socialism has ended in Turkey during the period of the AKP, Erdoğan said: “They have been talking about the principle of social state when the polls show up.”

Erdoğan reiterated his slamming on the CHP for making an alliance with the People’s Democratic Party (HDP).