Opposition: Coronavirus Has Cost Turkey 2 Million Jobs

Date: 04 April 2020 - 00:00

News ID: ۷۷۲۴۲

ANKARA (Dispatches) – More than two million workers in Turkey have lost their jobs due to measures taken to contain the coronavirus outbreak, the main opposition party says, as the government moves closer to enforcing stricter curbs on movement to slow its spread.
President Tayyip Erdogan’s government has ordered retailers, restaurants and other businesses to close but has yet to impose a full lockdown anywhere in the country.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, chairman of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), on Friday repeated his party’s call for broader restrictions on residents’ movements. At present only those over 65 are subject to a lockdown.
"They (the government) had to start a campaign to keep people home. This current campaign has only led to one thing: unemployment,” he told Fox TV in an interview, saying more than two million jobs had been lost during the epidemic.
It has killed more than 350 in Turkey, with confirmed cases topping 18,000, around 60% of which are in Istanbul.
Erdogan has warned of tougher restrictions if the outbreak worsens or if citizens fail to adhere to a "voluntary quarantine” he has demanded nationwide.
A Turkish official with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Friday that Ankara was evaluating further measures, including expanding the existing lockdown - under which essential trips are permitted - to those aged 60 and over and possibly also to under-18s.
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu also said the city is running out of time to impose a lockdown and stop a surge in coronavirus cases as around two million people are still going out into the streets every day.
Imamoglu repeated his call for a stay-at-home order for his city, the country’s commercial hub where 60% of the cases have been recorded.
"The measures you take for 16 million people, the methods for stopping the pandemic will save Turkey,” he said at the mayoral residence.
"We are in the most critical time,” he added. "Looking at the situation across the world, we are in a period that is very intense and could lead to figures that will upset us very much.”
He said an estimated 15% of Istanbul’s population were still using public transport or private vehicles.
"This means more than two million people (are still going out), and this is very frightening. It’s as much as the population of a prominent city in Europe.”
Pressure for more restrictions also came from Meral Aksener, chairwoman of the opposition Iyi Party, who said in an online interview on Friday that the government was "running” from a stay-at-home order due to its economic implications.
The CHP’s Kilicdaroglu said on Friday that around 400,000 businesses had closed and many workers paid wages on a daily basis had also been laid off since the current coronavirus curbs began.
"The number of those who worked there and are now unemployed exceeds 2 million. They will get unemployment wages from the unemployment fund for a short time, but there are no guarantees after that,” he said.