At a meeting Monday evening in Ankara at the headquarters of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), former finance minister and deputy prime minister Mehmet Şimşek reportedly rejected an offer from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to play a leading role in running the economy as the ruling party prepares its election manifesto and attempts to pivot towards a new economic approach heading into Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14.
The snub from Şimşek, whose years at the helm of the Turkish economy earned him clout in European finance circles, comes at a time when the ruling party has struggled make new allies heading into what is widely touted as the toughest test yet to President Erdoğan’s 20-plus year rule.
Expecting Şimşek to accept the president’s offer, several teams of reporters and camera crews had assembled outside the AKP’s Ankara headquarters in anticipation of an announcement of a press conference following the meeting. There was, however, no press conference to be had. Şimşek quietly refused Erdoğan’s offer and exited through the back door, leaving the building’s main entrance dark and reporters empty-handed.
Various commentators and actors from across Turkey’s political scene offered competing explanations for what had transpired on Monday evening. An AKP spokesperson and Şimşek himself were quick to play down the magnitude of the former finance minister’s rejection. A statement from the party read “Although he is not considering a return to active politics, the minister expressed his willingness to help in any way as it relates to our party and government politics. There is no extraordinary situation here; he is a friend of ours who has come to visit plenty of times in the past.”
Şimşek, too, sought to quell rumors that the rejection of the president’s offer had been the result of some major disagreement and offered a similar explanation to the AKP’s in a post on Twitter: “This evening I had the opportunity for a sincere meeting with our president at the AKP headquarters. I thanked him for this opportunity and expressed that I am ready to provide assistance in any area that pertains to my field. However, due to my current involvement in the financial industry abroad, I am not considering a return to active politics.”
Many other commentators, however, posited that Şimşek’s rejection of the president’s offer and quiet exit from the party headquarters were signs of the ruling party’s precarious position electorally and that a successful economic pivot may no longer be possible following years of unorthodox economic policies and runaway inflation.
Reports prior to the unsuccessful meeting had indicated that the AKP plans to pivot back to more conventional free market economic policies associated with the early years of Erdoğan’s tenure in the 2000s as well as Şimşek’s tenure as Finance Minister between 2009-2015. Şimşek oversaw Turkey’s response to the financial crash of 2008 as well as record-high foreign shares in the Lira bond market which have since plummeted.
President Erdoğan has been criticized in recent years for an unorthodox economic approach and record-high inflation. A notable crisis took place in December 2021, in which Erdoğan insisted upon lowering interest rates at Turkey’s central bank amidst record devaluation in which the Turkish Lira’s value against the US Dollar plummeted from 13 to 18 overnight. The currency’s freefall was halted only after the president announced a series of emergency measures deemed by many as risky and short-sighted.
Şimşek is not the only former AKP ally to snub the ruling party of late. On Monday, the New Welfare Party (Yeniden Refah Partisi) had been expected to announce their entrance into Erdoğan’s alliance for the upcoming elections. Instead, the leader of the right-wing Islamist party announced that they would instead stand alone from the AKP and run their own presidential candidate against Erdoğan. YRP Chairman Fatih Erbakan’s father, the late Necmettin Erbakan, was active in Islamist Turkish politics for decades and is viewed by many as Erdoğan’s political progenitor. The elder Erbakan became Turkey’s Prime Minister briefly in the 1990s before being pressured to step down by the secularist military in what became known as a ‘soft coup’.
Among the many take-aways from Monday’s events was the feeling among many analysts that potential allies are reluctant to partner with the AKP because they feel Erdoğan’s loss is imminent. In a broadcast on Tuesday, Medyascope editor-in-chief Ruşen Çakır said “It is remarkable on its own that Mehmet Şimşek was bold enough to make this move. They [Şimşek and Erbakan] must be seeing that the ship won’t make it out of the port, so to speak. If they really felt they [the AKP] could win, then they would have accepted Erdoğan’s offer without hesitation.” Positing that such alliances might be feasible after a hypothetical Erdoğan electoral victory, Çakır said “If Erdoğan wins, then I think it is doubtful he would once again reach out to Şimşek, but in this scenario, I am sure Şimşek would accept the post.”
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Following his role as Finance Minister, Şimşek served as Deputy Prime Minister under Ahmet Davutoğlu and Binali Yıldırım from 2015-2018 before the role was phased out in favor of Turkey’s current presidential system, which came into force that year. In 2018, Erdoğan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak took over as Finance Minister, serving until 2020.
Written for Medyascope by Leo Kendrick
