Ministers deviate from Erdoğan's discourse on pineapple, interest lobby

Two prominent members of the Cabinet have refused to go along with two main keywords Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has frequently resorted to in order to demonize the opposition against him amidst escalating pressure on his government stemming from allegations of corruption and bribery.

Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç opposed Erdoğan over the issue of a “pineapple,” while Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek rejected the existence of an “interest lobby.”

Arınç dwelled on the pineapple issue, a recently popular focus of the prime minister's political rhetoric to discredit the Hizmet movement. In an illegally recorded phone conversation, Mustafa Günay, the secretary-general of the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (TUSKON), is heard telling Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen that he had sent Ugandan pineapples to businessmen as gifts. Günay was also consulting Gülen's opinion about a tender for a refinery in this country, saying a Turkish company should enter it.

Arınç said people should avoid repeating the pineapple and Uganda issues. “If some names are mentioned in these telephone conversations involving businessmen's investments abroad, it is better not to blame them, too,” Arınç said. “If there is to be business there and a Turkish company should win it, there is nothing wrong with mediating this. I wish there were a pineapple here right now so that we could eat it,” he added.

Speaking on live TV on Thursday, Arınç said he has a special interest in Uganda, recalling his presidency of the joint economic committee with this country. He said he went to Uganda in 2010 to attend a business forum there and needed to take some Turkish businessmen with him. He noted that he had called TUSKON Secretary-General Mustafa Günay to ask for his assistance in sending the business group's members to Uganda.

TUSKON, the biggest business organization in Turkey, has connections all around the world and its member companies are at the forefront of trade with Africa. Arınç said there was no Turkish Embassy in Uganda when Turkish entrepreneurs first went to this country 11 years ago to open schools. He also noted that he had met with students of these schools at the time. They organized a dinner and attended the meeting with the president of Uganda, Arınç added, congratulating them on going to a country where there was no embassy and establishing schools there. “I went there and we made some nice deals. In our hotel, for example, we concluded a trade agreement to sell 200,000 pairs of shoes, which is simple, but we were doing such sales for the first time with Uganda. I was very pleased,” he said.

On another occasion on Thursday, Mehmet Şimşek pricked the bubble of the “interest lobby” theory, saying that no segment of society is being accused of being the interest lobby. He said the lobby is a discourse that stems from a concern that the country's resources flow to interest payments rather than production in times of instability in the country, the minister asserted.

Şimşek was the keynote speaker in a panel discussion seeking to promote an analysis, titled “Public Finance, from Past to Present,” prepared by the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA).

“We are trying to improve the investment environment in particular. If the interest rates permanently rise, we will see this reflect on the overall interest burden. The real interest rates are important here,” he said. Şimşek argued that the average term of domestic debt today is about three-and-a-half years, noting that the effect of the rise in interest rates will be felt fully within this period.

Published on Today's Zaman, 30 January 2014, Thursday