Newsletters & Press

The month of May was marked by the holding of presidential and legislative elections which concluded with the victory of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his party the AKP (party of justice and development). The outgoing president has, in fact, won the second round of the presidential election and saw his mandate renewed at the head of the country for five additional years after having collected 52.16% of the votes against his opponent Kemal Kılıçdaroglu, who obtained 47.84% of the votes, through his coalition made up of six parties. Shortly after the results were confirmed, world leaders congratulated Erdogan's re-election and tweeted a few messages, with some hailing a "NATO ally", "strategic partner" or "economic partner" and others pointing to "a logical result". French President Emmanuel Macron was one of the first European leaders to offer his congratulations, pointing out that their two countries had "tremendous challenges to overcome together".

In the legislative elections, the AKP obtained the largest number of seats (268 out of 600) and was able to form a majority thanks to its coalition made up of two other parties (the MHP, the nationalist party and the YRP, the new party of the prosperity) with a total of 323 seats. Its main opponent, the CHP (Republican People's Party), holds 189 seats thanks to the alliance formed with the IYI PARTI (nationalist and secular party).

During this last term of President Erdogan, the big challenge will undoubtedly be economic and monetary. Fighting inflation will be one of the president's top priorities. In April, inflation had reached more than 40% year on year, a high figure but still below the 85% reached last fall. The Turkish lira has lost more than half of its value in two years to reach 20 turkish lira for one dollar. According to official data, Ankara spent 25 billion USD in a month to support it.

Other priority issues will be on the President's table, including the reconstruction of the country hard hit by the February 6 earthquakes which devastated entire areas of southeastern Turkey, killing at least 50,000 people and more than 3 million displaced. President Erdogan has promised to rebuild 650,000 homes in the affected provinces as soon as possible. The total cost of the damage of the disaster amounts to more than 100 billion USD according to the UN.

On the economic level, Turkey recorded a significant growth of 4% of its GDP in Q1 2023 over one year, a high and significant figure since this growth was achieved while the country had to face the terrible earthquakes that occurred in February and manage heavy political news (elections) to the detriment of worrying economic news (inflation).

The sectors that have strongly contributed to the country's economic performance are services (12.4%), professional, administrative and support service activities (12.0%) and financial and insurance activities (11.2%). %). The other sectors which contributed to the growth are information and communication activities (8.1%) and construction (5.1%). The agricultural sector and industry recorded a slight decline of 3.8% and 0.7% respectively.

Household consumption expenditure rose 16.2% year-on-year.

Per capita income reached 11,374 USD.