An alleged assassination attempt targeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was foiled on Saturday, the country's official media reported.
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According to Turkey's official TRT news agency, Turkish police found an explosive device under a vehicle belonging to a police officer who was supposed to be on duty at a rally for Erdogan Saturday morning.
The improvised explosive under the police officer's personal vehicle was found in Mardin, a province in the southeast that's more 125 miles (200 kilometers) away from the rally held in Siirt, the outlet said. The explosive was discovered before the police officer traveled to Siirt and was defused by bomb squads.
The bomb was reported to be equipped with a remote detonation system.
According to Turkish news outlets affiliated with the government, a manhunt was underway.
Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan'ın mitingine tuzak önlendi! https://t.co/KOT4lDppNC pic.twitter.com/QwxfclKsn9
— CNN TÜRK #MaskeniTak 😷 (@cnnturk) December 4, 2021
Turkey has been battling the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in southeast Turkey for almost four decades.
Meanwhile, as Turkey plunges deeper into a severe economic crisis – its currency has lost more than 45% of its value against the dollar since the start of the year – latest polls show Erdogan to be increasingly unpopular.
Ankara also appears increasingly isolated on the international scene, with its relations with the European Union and NATO particularly strained.
"There is no place for terror in Turkey's future," Erdogan said at a rally in Siirt on Saturday. "We will not let any young man in the country fall into the hungry mouths of the terror groups."
The embattled Turkish president also said he hoped that volatile foreign exchange and inflation rates would stabilize shortly and he again promised low interest rates.
"God willing we will stabilize all fluctuations in prices and forex rates in not such a long time," Erdogan told an audience in Siirt.
"Tayyip Erdogan said low interest rates yesterday, says low interest rates today and will say low interest rates tomorrow," the Turkish president said, speaking in the third person. "I will never compromise on this because interest rates are a malady that make the rich even richer, and the poor even poorer."
Inflation jumped to a three-year high of 21.3% last month, leaving Turkey's real rates deeply negative, a red flag for fleeing investors and for Turkish savers who have flocked to hard currencies to protect their wealth.
Despite opposition calls for early elections and a policy reversal, Erdogan has repeated in recent weeks that rate cuts are needed to boost exports, credit, jobs and economic growth.
Under pressure from the president, the central bank has slashed its policy rate by 400 basis points to 15% and is expected to ease policy again this month.
"We will always be there for producers and employers with low interest rates. We're starting to enforce precautions safeguarding workers against inflation," Erdogan said.
He said unspecific foreign actors, as well as "greedy" businesses that stockpile more goods than needed, are in part to blame for some sharp price spikes.
At a separate event in the southern city of Mersin, where crowds called for Erdogan to resign, main opposition CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said a new government would forgive all interest on loans held by farmers and small businesses.
"He doesn't need to resign, we'll send him off anyway," Kilicdaroglu said of elections set for no later than mid-2023.
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