Economic Gurus Advising Erdogan’s Foes to Meet as Election Nears

Kerim Karakaya, Beril Akman and Onur Ant
·2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Top economic advisers at Turkish opposition parties are preparing to meet in Istanbul on Saturday, a show of unity with barely a week left before a tightly contested election that’s put a spotlight on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s control over institutions and policy.

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Attendees will include the Iyi party’s Bilge Yilmaz, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and Kerim Rota, a veteran bank treasurer who saw his candidacy for the top job at the local unit of a foreign lender rejected by Turkey’s regulator in 2018.

As the cost-of-living crisis still rages in Turkey, senior officials within a six-party bloc that’s been assembled in a bid to topple Erdogan have pushed their joint presidential candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, to appear alongside each party’s economic gurus before the vote on May 14, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg, Rota — top economic aide at former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s Future Party — highlighted the importance of appointments at key institutions and said the alliance has a consensus on how to overhaul an economy that’s remained prone to crises.

“The first step will be to restore credibility,” he said, adding that another key goal would be to pull Turkey from its inflation quagmire “within a year or two.”

If elected, Kilicdaroglu, 74, will lean heavily on what he’s called the “champions league” of economic advisers to craft policies that could win back the market’s confidence after years of cheap money allowed inflation to spiral and crippled Turkey’s currency. Rota will be among the advisers expected to attend a rally with Kilicdaroglu on Saturday, though it’s not clear they’ll appear on stage.

Asked if Turkey might need assistance from the International Monetary Fund, Rota said the situation isn’t yet dire enough. But while it’s “too big a country” to be bailed out, he said in “another year, Turkey would be at the IMF’s doorstep” if current policies aren’t reversed.

--With assistance from Firat Kozok.

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