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French Development Agency and a €110mn loan from Deutsche Bank.
Ankara feels financing heat too​. The secularist CHP also defeated the incumbent AKP earlier this year in the political capital Ankara.
Its new mayor, Mansur Yavas, said last week that the central government had “disregarded” a previous deal over metro costs and also cut the city’s shares by 5%, leaving Ankara “under a serious financial burden”, Reuters reported.
In January, researchers at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the London School of Economics concluded that Turkish public banks have “systematically” adjusted lending patterns around elections in the last 15 years to boost provinces where incumbent mayors from the ruling party faced tough challenges. State banks, they contended, also cut lending in provinces where opposition mayors faced tight elections.
Imamoglu has said his election victory against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP party carries an important lesson for the world’s populist leaders​: Act against the will of the people you claim to represent, and you’ll lose it all.
“The democratic stance put forth by Turkey this year proved the following: if you’re not acting in line with people’s interests, demands, freedom and rights, you get sent out,” Imamoglu told Bloomberg TV on November 15 during a trip to London to meet representatives of the global finance and academics. “It’s a very valuable stance at a world where populism has made its peak,” he added.
Imamoglu, Bloomberg reported, won’t openly admit to having presidential aspirations. But he knows he needs to have something to show for his years in office if he wants to make the jump from the mayor’s office to the centre of national politics as Erdogan, himself a former mayor of Istanbul, did.
Imamoglu’s office is weighing whether it should try to raise $500mn through a bond sale, thought that is a small slice of Istanbul’s consolidated annual budget of around $9bn.
The city’s subway construction project that’s currently underway will cost at least $2bn. Plans to protect Istanbul from the fallout of climate change also need funding. Such projects will eventually pay for themselves through revenue they generate, Imamoglu added.
“The only thing in my mind is to be very successful, and one of the most democratic mayors around the world,” Imamoglu said, answering repeated questions about the widely-held belief that he’ll one day take on Erdogan. “If you work hard, then people want to send you where they think you fit without you even planning for it.”
Imamoglu has been careful not to attack Erdogan directly but doesn’t rule out running against him when elections are held. They are currently scheduled for 2023.
Ex-Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu is set to form a new party to challenge the ruling party of his former ally, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, within weeks, ​Reuters cited a source close to the matter as saying on November 30.
Former deputy prime minister Ali Babacan, who resigned from the AKP in July citing “deep differences,” said earlier in the month he hoped to have formed his planned new political party by the end of the year​ to challenge the AKP, of which he was a founding member.
The Reuters source reportedly played down any prospects of Davutoglu
20​ TURKEY Country Report​ December 2019 ​ ​www.intellinews.com