[ad_1]
IIn the midst of a currency crisis, Turkish President’s son-in-law Recep Tayyip Erdogan resigned from his post as finance minister. He was unable to continue for health reasons, Berat Albayrak of the ruling conservative Islamic AKP party wrote in a statement on Instagram on Sunday. Now he wants to spend time with his family. The statement was authentic, confirmed a spokesman for the German press agency’s finance ministry.
Erdogan added Albayrak to the cabinet as finance minister in July 2018, after Turkey moved from a parliamentary system to a presidential one. Albayrak was previously Minister of Energy. He has been married to Erdogan’s daughter Esra since 2004.
Erdogan has not yet accepted
It was unclear whether Erdogan would accept the resignation of Albayrak, 42. In April, the Turkish interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, announced his resignation: Erdogan did not accept it and Soylu remained in office.
The Turkish economy has been in crisis for a long time. In recent days, the value of the Turkish lira had fallen particularly rapidly and hit another all-time low in trading with the US dollar on Friday. For one dollar, sometimes 8,576 lire had to be paid, that is, about 49 percent more than the previous year. One euro recently cost almost 10.18 lire at times. This corresponds to an increase of around 60 percent in one year.
On Saturday night, Erdogan fired the head of the central bank, Murat Uysal, without giving any reason. His successor is Naci Agbal, who was Minister of Finance from 2015 to 2018.
Erdogan follows an unorthodox monetary policy. He often calls the key rate the “mother of all evils” and urges it to be lowered. Turkey is waging an economic war against a “devil’s triangle” consisting of interest rates, exchange rates and inflation, Erdogan declared last weekend.
