Prime minister forcefully pursues debts from nationalist leader's term

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan greets deputies from his ruling AKP during a meeting in Parliament in Ankara on April 16. REUTERS photo

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has continued his tough criticism of opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli over his alleged part in “huge debts” created between 1999 and 2002, when the MHP was in a three-way coalition government.

“Bank deposits were scammed in one night, some people were given unearned income with 7,500 percent overnight interest; will not you answer for that?” Erdoğan asked Bahçeli today during his party’s group meeting.

“Since you were a part of that government, you should have asked for the accounts for those [things]; you did not. We have to see them. If we put aside [these accounts,] then our citizens will think that this party did nothing wrong and came to this day blamelessly,” Erdoğan said.

Erdoğan said his government had been handed the Central Bank with 27.5 billion dollars in reserves but that the lender now had reserves of 127 billion dollars.

“This is real nationalism,” he said. Erdoğan further said it was his government that cleared the coalition’s debts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Previously Erdoğan had said an investigation would be launched to look into the coalition’s financial records.

The MHP participated in the coalition with the Democratic Left Party (DSP) and Motherland Party (ANAP).