Erdoğan had said, 'Whatever we give, it melts away!' İmamoğlu criticizes the 'administration'...

İBB Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu attended the Creative and Free Istanbul Presentation.

Speaking at the event, here are the highlights from İmamoğlu's remarks:

"THE WORLD'S WORST ECONOMIC POLICIES"

"When we talk about economic hardships, there are those who are uncomfortable with it. They want us to act as if there is no problem in the economy, as if retirees have not been crushed by inflation, or as if the minimum wage has not remained below the hunger threshold. Due to the democracy crisis we are experiencing, this is a crisis that we are all exposed to more intensely than ever. There is an administrative process that is actually contradicting itself by saying, 'Whatever we give, it melts away.' Whatever you give will melt; because we are in a period governed by the world's worst economic policies.

Furthermore, there is no transparency in administrations that feed on discrimination and polarization. These create uniformity. A process of 'I know everything, I did it and it happened' emerges. Most importantly, there is no environment of trust. We are living in a period where we are losing our country's most valuable young people due to this polarizing mindset.

"THOSE WHO MOCKED THE CITY RESTAURANTS..."

I place the Istanbul Planning Agency in a very important position in this sense. I believe it will make great contributions to our lives as it develops.

We shared Istanbul's data with the Istanbul Statistics Office we established within it. When we say data, we don't mean it the way some people find convenient. It is completely independent, accurate, and reliable data based on real research. Even if some data made us, as the İBB, uncomfortable, we never shied away from it.

Whatever the issue regarding Istanbul, we invited the stakeholders to the table and made decisions by discussing them together. We made an effort to actively include every segment of society in the city's daily life, not just in decision-making processes.

A mindset disconnected from society, which mocked and belittled the City Restaurants (Kent Lokantaları), also made fun of our workshops and the meetings where we mobilized collective wisdom at that time. It is quite normal for this mindset to belittle collective wisdom.

"KADIKÖY WATERFRONT WILL BE DECLARED A CULTURE ZONE"

Today is World Theatre Day; on this occasion, I sincerely congratulate the entire art community. With our İBB Heritage and İBB Culture brands, and our Istanbul Bookstore, we have brought public spaces together with culture and art to the fullest.

Let's take a look at the steps we will take in the next 5 years.

In the first place are culture zones. In this period, we will bring 100 culture and art zones to Istanbul with 200 new venues. Among these are the Haliç Culture Zone and the Maçka Culture Zone.

The Kadıköy Waterfront will be declared a Culture Zone. Istanbul will turn into a giant culture center.

We will open Culture and Art Centers. We will offer our citizens the opportunity to meet with culture and art.

When we took office, we increased the number of museums in the İBB center from 4 to 35. We have achieved developments that compete with the world in the field of museology."

WHAT HAPPENED?

President and AKP Chairman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in his speech at his party's rally in Aksaray yesterday, had stated, "In an environment of high inflation, whatever we give melts away like a bottomless pit. Our hands will be relieved as inflation begins to fall from the second half of the year. We need to bring inflation under control."