“Economic indicators are going seriously backward,” Gul, once close political ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in an interview with Taha Akyol, a columnist for the Karar newspaper, published on Monday.

“There is a lack of strategy based on the long-term, on analysis and on expertise,” Gul said. “This situation is worrying.”

In an interview, Gul, who is among the founders of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said that policies that overlap with the people’s wills and that generate solutions, happiness and welfare need to be put forward.

“In the short run, what needs to be done is to enter a path that supports freedoms and implement policies that would give confidence via enhancing the investment environment,” Gul told the daily when asked about a way out of Turkey’s problems.

“In the long run, a high-standard democratic state of law must be constructed, beginning from the constitution, and a free market economy that works within the scope of rules must be brought to life. The environment that would be created by the implementation of all aspects of good governance would trigger Turkey’s major potential in all areas,” he said.

Saying that his suggestions would create a major source of energy in Turkey, which lacks natural resources such as oil and gas, Gul noted that the human resource and institutional capacity of the country are at admirable levels.

“The easiest thing to do would be to make the human resource with outstanding qualities and the institutional structure effective again, as well as to ensure that the bureaucrats work neutrally and very hard via prioritizing merit in mid- and high-level bureaucracy. It’s a must to introduce structural reforms in the process,” Gul said.

He also commented on Turkey’s economy, saying that the country “still stands” thanks to the structural transformation in the first five years of the AKP.

“If we’re still able to stand despite what happened in the past five years, it’s due to the structural transformation in the economy in the first five years. An enduring economy was formed thanks to those reforms,” he said, listing the “unfortunate” developments in the past five years as repetitive elections, July 15, 2016 failed coup attempt and the constitutional referendum that led Turkey to switch to an executive presidential system.

“All of these shook Turkey and damaged economic stability,” Gul added.

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