Türkiye does not worry over energy, food supplies: Erdoğan

ANKARA

World leaders are very much concerned with the energy and food supplies following the Ukraine-Russia war but Türkiye does not face such a problem, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Oct. 10.

“Inflation, which has reached the highest levels of the last 50-60 years, is pushing everyone, including western countries,” Erdoğan said at the Higher Education Academic Year opening ceremony.

As winter approaches in these countries, concerns about energy and food are escalating, he said and added, “I heard this from the leaders at the Prague summit: ‘How will we get through this winter?’ I said, ‘we don’t have such a problem.’”

Erdoğan criticized the leaders of only thinking about this issue. “But on the other hand, unfortunately, they were not evaluating the developments between Russia and Ukraine with common sense,” he said.

The president stressed that both political instability and economic problems were hitting the poor countries at the fringes of the global system the hardest.

“Fragile states with weak economies, unable to achieve social peace, have difficulty in managing this painful process,” Erdoğan said, noting that it is inevitable that there will be radical changes in the world in the coming period.

Humanity has been going through a period of crisis that has started with the pandemic in the last few years, continuing with economic problems and hot conflicts, Erdoğan said.

“When we look especially carefully at the new crises that erupt in a different part of the world almost every day, we open our eyes with this. The global system, which was built to protect the interests of the victors after World War II, is going through one of the biggest shocks of the last 70 years,” he added.

States with a weak economy, limited production capacity, unable to achieve full social peace and open to political interventions, and fragile states have difficulty in managing this painful process, Erdoğan emphasized.