H.E. Mr. Mehmet Hakan Olcay:

Religious freedoms are constitutional guarantees, so I see no problem in that area. They enjoy all the rights the Muslim majority in the country enjoys.

Coming to the Covid-19 problem, as I said in my opening statement, we have a resilient healthcare system, so we were not that bad. On the vaccines, although we cannot match Ireland, where 90% have been vaccinated, in Turkey 112,356,099 vaccines have been used. Some 54 million are first dose, which represents 75% of the population, while 46 million are second dose, which represents 74.36% of the population. During the pandemic, we had 7 million people who were infected by the virus and to date we have recorded 63,000 deaths, but of course we are a country of 83 million so when you take this figure, you have to base it on that population.

Our economy was also affected by the pandemic and the curfew which was imposed on and off. We had a different system. Instead of a prolonged lockdown, it was lockdown on the weekends, on certain holidays and so forth. However, the economy was affected just like all other countries. The economy is also being affected by the rise in energy prices, which is the same problem Ireland has begun to experience in the last year. Electricity and natural gas prices have gone up, so it has affected many areas of life. Part of that is because of the pandemic, which I hope we will soon leave behind.