HABERTURK TV: (29 September 2003) Everybody from the market, politics and the business world waits for the resolution to be given by the High Election Committee. We asked Dr.Zeynel Abidin Erdem to make his comments about this issue:

ERDEM: It is not a great surprise for Turkey but I think that some logical events in Turkey shall follow these types of matters that are not logical and Turkey shall return to its status again. Turkey has gained very considerable gains on the international platform. Turkey, which has become almost the leader of the problems present in America, the European Union and the Far East and the Middle East, by suddenly stepping back through this resolution, shall have a negative result, which shall lead to a conclusion in which it is not possible for us to determine what shall come next. Thus, Turkey has a probability of returning back to its former place as a result of the resolution to be taken by the High Election Committee. In my opinion, both the market and today’s Middle East conjuncture shall ensure that a logic, which is dominant over logic, shall bring a point where it could work harder and thus it should bring in an environment where no election is mentioned and no election is put into the agenda of the people. The resolution to be taken by High Election Committee may be correct of course within their own rights. But it shall have an adverse affect on the international platform and markets. While Turkey has declared itself victorious against the Dollar, defeat of the Turkish Lira shall result in non-confidence in the markets again, and return to money being put under the pillow, an environment where there is no reliability. For this reason, I believe personally that we should keep away from this disaster both for markets and also in name of the friends in the management of the holding and I clearly call this as a disaster. Why? I won’t forget the conversation which took place in Dubai last week between Bill Clinton, former US President, who left the presidency of the biggest state in the world only a short time ago and Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey. He wanted to visit Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan at nine o’ clock a.m when the sun rises and when the business world starts to work a new, and wanted to discuss the issues on the agenda, for 2 hours he talked about the situation of Turkey on an international platform and he said “you are a leader, the Middle East’s Turkey today is a country which is capable of refusing these conditions and setting rules and taking positive results” I won’t forget this meeting. Now, from such a good impression, I don’t want to think about a new election, a new government, and a new system, a new gap which shall invalidate the resolutions taken by us and the laws that you made, all of which will result in a non-confident environment in which we don’t know what to do. I repeat once again that all the leaders of the Arabic Countries individually told us “you are a balancing factor in the Middle East”, by visiting Mr. Erdoğan. This is an expression of the trust shown on Turkey. These kinds of comments are made because of the personnel characteristics, attitudes and decisive approach of Mr. Erdoğan. However, we should not forget the greatness of Turkey as well. Well, in an environment where speeches are made such as in Turkey,it has an established order, money removed from under the pillow, deposits made in the banks by trusting them again and opening accounts and giving an opportunity to obtain credit once again, the pressure of the Turkish Lira over the dollar, the approach that Turkey is the leader of the Middle East on the international platform. Returning back to instability may result in a coalition and we don’t want to get involved in the same issues again. We have created a balance and this balance is the balance of Turkish people. Assume that there was a small adulteration or a small mistake. Even if all of the 20 thousand or 60 thousand votes of that region were incorrect, they don’t have any value inside the votes in millions. They have no sense and power.

Eventually, it is a deputy that it may, or may not elect. Well could you explain to me the meaning of this before an environment where there are 550 deputies? Economy has a stable order automatically. All things go well, I repeat again that a confidence is obtained on the international platform. Both the IMF and other countries are in the queue in order to loan to us. The people whose doors were knocked on by us now try to be liked by us. That is to say, I think that I could express in an explicit and simple manner the things that we should do when we look back for a while.

In such a case, we are sure that both the High Election Committee and other organs shall take into account these aspects. It is the way the people at the markets talk. Their trust is the same both on the High Election Committee and on today’s government. For that reason, though I don’t want to be the crier of disaster but I don’t think that it will be a very good thing.