'Turkey will begin COVID-19 vaccination by this weekend'

* Photo: Mustafa Kamacı / AA

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Ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed the public after the Cabinet meeting in the capital city of Ankara yesterday (January 11).

Erdoğan talked about a series of issues on Turkey's agenda, including the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the current drought and a possible water shortage, economic developments and Republican People's Party (CHP) Chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's remarks about him.

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'So-called chair of a political party'

Addressing main opposition leader Kılıçdaroğlu, whom he filed a suit for damages for calling him the "so-called president", Erdoğan said:

"The days when the imposition of the tutelage was effective in determining the person to be elected President in Turkey are over.

"Now, the President is determined in this country by the will of more than half of the nation. Those who still cannot swallow such a great revolution express their trouble under different disguises and excuses.

"The is also the reason behind the trouble of the so-called chair of a political party who himself came to power following a tape plot and achieves to remain in power by ignoring the incidents of harassment, rape and theft within his party. Their trouble is with the nation; their trouble is with the national will and the preferences of the nation."

'Fifth column organizations'

Erdoğan also argued that "as Turkey kept proceeding on its path with determination despite all attacks and troubles brought about by global problems, it saw that there were attempts to set new traps on its path."

Saying that "those covertly or overtly supporting the activities of terrorist organizations inside and outside Turkey's borders were making efforts to prevent the creation of big and strong Turkey", Erdoğan referred to the "attempts of political and social chaos", indicating that "the fifth column organizations in disguise of civil society and the operation apparatus in disguise of the media were unmasked one by one."

'Restrictions will be eased gradually'

As reported by the state-run Anadolu Agency (AA), President and AKP Chair Erdoğan also announced that Turkey would begin the vaccine jabs for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) by this weekend.

"The COVID-19 vaccine will begin to be administered on Thursday or Friday in line with the determined order," said Erdoğan.

"With the number of COVID-19 cases falling below a certain number, we will ease the restrictions gradually, as we did before," he added.

"Turkey closely follows all vaccine development and production activities across the world, and is interested in any product that is at the stage of inoculation. As you know, we have currently started to bring a Chinese vaccine to our country. We have also made an agreement for a German vaccine, but the negotiations are still underway.

"We have not, mutually, made our final decisions yet. We also closely follow the developments regarding Russian and British-origin vaccines."

Economy, export, energy

Touching upon the economic developments as well, Erdoğan said, "In the second quarter, the pandemic deeply affected our country as it did the rest of the world", adding that "Turkey, nevertheless, shrank 9.9 percent in this period, a rate that is way smaller than the other countries."

"We managed to keep our economy resilient during that difficult period thanks to the measures and incentives we put in place," said President Erdoğan and underlined that Turkey "entered a period of quick recovery with the normalization steps starting from June 2020."

"We ended 2020 quite successfully in terms of exports, too, despite the severe contraction in export markets due to the pandemic. With 169.5 billion dollars' worth of exports last year, we exceeded the annual targets by 4 billion dollars. The figures are yet to be announced, but I believe we also surpassed the targeted growth rate of 0.3 percent in 2020.

"We want to look to the future more confidently by boosting energy efficiency as well. To that end, we aim to make a saving that is equivalent to 24 billion tons of oil with the National Energy Efficiency Plan, which we launched two years ago. With this plan, we hope to achieve a saving ratio of 14 per cent in energy consumption in the first stage until 2023." (EKN/SD)