Erdoğan calls student housing protesters 'liars'

Photo: Barınamayanlar/Twitter

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President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dismissed the growing housing protests by students as "lies."

"We are a government that has increased the dormitory capacities more than ever and that currently has almost a million capacity," he said yesterday (September 26) in İstanbul at the opening ceremony for new eldercare facilities.

"Unfortunately, they make irrelevant people lie on banks and such a campaign of lies continues. You are lying. Your lives are full of lies," he said, referring to students who spend nights at parks in protest of high housing prices.

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The park protests started in İstanbul on September 19 and have spread to more than a dozen provinces since then. Students demand affordable and adequate housing.

As in-person classes are about to resume after one and a half years of distance education, university students have faced difficulties in finding housing because of an excessive increase in rent prices and insufficient dormitories.

There are over eight million university students in Turkey with millions studying in other cities than their hometowns, whereas the capacity of state dormitories is less than a million. (RT/VK)