President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan performed the Friday prayer at Hagia Sophia, which was reopened as a mosque on July 24.
After the prayer, he addressed the people in front of the mosque, touching on several issues, including the spike in the dollar and gold, the developments in the eastern Mediterranean, the explosion in Lebanon and the coronavirus epidemic.
Lira's loss against dollar
On Turkish lira's historic low against the dollar, Euro and gold yesterday, Erdoğan said that "volatility can always occur."
"If you look at the economic developments in the world at the moment, when you look at the USA, Russia, Europe, you will see that there are very serious zigzags in the economy after the coronavirus." he added.
"I don't want to mention the enemies inside anyway, those outside are enough for us." he said.
"We came into office in November 2002. In 2002, the total national income was 236 billion dollars. It increased to 754 billion dollars in 2019. Likewise, per capita income was 3,880 dollars then, this figure increased to 9,127 dollars in 2019. Apart from this, let's look at automobile sales. In 2002, domestic sales were 91 thousand. In 2016, it recovered to 756 thousand. Looking at refrigerator sales, it was 1 million 88 thousand in 2002. However, as of 2017, it increased to 3 million 107 thousand and to 2 million 486 thousand in 2019." he said.
"This shows something: Turkey is on the rise. But there are those who do not want to see it, who do not see it. I'm talking with documents. The number of opened companies rose to 85,263 from 30,842. Employment was 19.6 million people, currently, there are 28 million 80 thousand employed.
"When we came to office, Turkey owed the IMF 23 billion dollars. We paid our debt in 2013. We have 105 billion dollars of [foreign exchange] reserves. We stand tall."
After the President's speech, #buzdolabı (refrigerator) became a trending topic in Turkey on Twitter.