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Accusing the government of draining the Central Bank's foreign exchange reserves, the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) hung up banners reading "Where is 128 billion dollars?" on its buildings across the country.
Police yesterday (April 14) removed banners upon orders by prosecutors, using cranes to take down some of them.
Previously, police also removed the same banners put into billboards by the CHP in Bursa and Kırşehir provinces and opened an investigation against party officials for "insulting the president."
Reacting to the police's move, Canan Kaftancıoğlu, the CHP İstanbul Chair, said on Twitter that "We will hang up our banners in 39 districts every day."
Hadi vinci anladık da toma ve çevik kuvvet ne?
— Canan Kaftancıoğlu (@Canan_Kaftanci) April 13, 2021
Korkmayın biz halkız, halkın partisiyiz, haksızlığa uğradığınızda sizin de haklarınızı koruruz
CHP’den korkmayın ama yaptığınız hukuksuz işlerden ve işlediğiniz suçlardan korkabilirsiniz ve bence de korkun pic.twitter.com/p9kpXwVA07
CHP Deputy Chair Muharrem Erkek held a press conference about the issue yesterday, saying, "Answer the question in the banners instead of removing them. The nation is waiting for an answer from you."
As of yesterday, police removed the banners in 40 provinces, he noted.
Opposition parties and economists have criticized the government for draining the Central Bank reserves in an unsuccessful bid to prevent the exchange rate of the US dollar from rising during the spell of Berat Albayrak as the finance minister.
Indicating the amount of money that is estimated to be sold, "Where is 128 billion dollars?" has become a slogan of the opposition, often seen in Twitter's trending topic over the past few months.
"If this question could be answered, we could have supported our tradespeople during this period of lockdown," Erkek said, adding that it was a "constitutional duty" to ask about the reserves.
"They enter our district and provincial buildings. As of today, governors, public prosecutors, administrative authorities are clearly committing a crime. Because they give unlawful orders," he remarked.
Albayrak, the son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, resigned as the finance minister in November. During his tenure, the government kept the interest rates low as part of Erdoğan's theory suggesting that higher interest rates cause higher inflation, which resulted in an increased exchange rate of the US dollar. (AS/VK)
