Erdogan rejects minister's resignation over coronavirus curfew

AKIPRESS.COM - Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected the resignation of his interior minister, who had said he would quit after a much-criticised weekend curfew to tackle the coronavirus outbreak which caught millions of people by surprise, Al Jazeera reports. "In a process carried out diligently and meticulously, the responsibility for all implementation of the weekend curfew to stem the pandemic falls on me in every respect," Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said on Twitter on Sunday evening.
Later on Sunday, the Turkish presidency said that Erdogan had not accepted the resignation.
Turkey announced the weekend lockdown late on Friday, but in the brief time before it went into effect, many people rushed out to buy food and drink in the country's commercial hub Istanbul, a city of 16 million people, and other cities.
The lockdown ended at 21:00 GMT on Sunday.