Flash claim from former president Birol Aydemir: 'TÜİK blocked one-third of salary raises!'

Birol Aydemir, the former president of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), has submitted a written statement to the court panel in the case against the institution. Stating that trust in TÜİK data has been lost, Aydemir recalled the data the institution has been obscuring since 2022. 

Aydemir alleged that by showing inflation as 31 percent lower, TÜİK caused salary raises to be one-third lower than they should have been.

Erdoğan Süzer from Sözcü reported the written petition submitted by Birol Aydemir to the court as follows: 

“TÜİK stopped publishing the average prices of items as of May 2022. After this date, the gap between the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (İTO) inflation and TÜİK inflation began to widen. When we equalize the TÜİK and İTO indices in January 2022, it would not be wrong to say that TÜİK has shown inflation to be 31 percent lower in total over the last 3 years. This means that a 31 percent total wage increase from the pockets of civil servants and retirees was personally blocked by TÜİK. In other words, retirees and civil servants are owed at least one-third of their salaries.”

Since the job security of the TÜİK president has been removed, it is normal for a president who can be dismissed by the political authority with a single signature at any time to worry about being dismissed if they announce an inflation rate that the government does not like. Indeed, after me, the president was changed 6 times in 8 years. The current President was appointed in January 2022. Given that he has been serving as President for three years, it would not be wrong to say that the political authority is satisfied with the inflation he announces.

'INSTRUCTIONS TO CHANGE HIGH PRICES...'

In products such as automobiles, where price increases and their weight are very high, CPI calculations had to be made in some months of 2021 without reflecting these increases, in line with the instructions of the senior management to the Ankara Regional Manager. It is said that there was an order from senior management to show the CPI as low. Furthermore, Regional Managers were called directly by phone and instructed to change the prices of products showing high price increases. Regional Managers who objected to this were dismissed.”

News Source: 12punto