ISTANBUL – ANSWER. Six months before the presidential elections in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan he promised Turkish citizens better days after 2023 and announced that his country had discovered natural gas deposits worth up to one trillion dollars. A week earlier, he announced a 50 percent increase in base pay. However, the daily life of the Turks in the last years of Erdogan’s rule is becoming more complicated due to inflation, and most citizens of the lower economic strata are expressing their grievances.

I was impressed by our conversation with the taxi driver, Mr. Ahmed, when we were driving from the Besiktas area to Taksim Square. Telling me about his complaints about the prevailing orderliness, he revealed his position to me, emphasizing: “We have reached unprecedented poverty … Several years ago, in the morning, together with my children, we ate breakfast. Bread, cheese, some olives, maybe some jam. But today I can’t, it’s out of the question. All it takes is some fucking soup that we brought from the village and some bread, and we all go to work and school together.” He acknowledges that in the early years of Erdogan’s rule, he was able to invest and improve his standard of living, but notes that the situation has worsened in recent years.

A few days later, during our visit to a friend’s house, Mr. Erkan, a janitor by profession, when I asked him how his life is today, he said something to me that perhaps reflects the current economic trends in the country. “We came to Istanbul 12 years ago. Then we dreamed of buying a house. But now it is excluded, there is no possibility. Now we understand how it happens that the dream is gone. Today we dream of returning to the village in order to survive, perhaps to build our father’s house,” he said and expressed his doubts for the coming years. The data confirm Ercan’s words. Official inflation in Turkey is at 85%, unofficial at 120%, however, due to the policy of lowering the interest rate carried out by the central bank of Turkey, unlike all other central banks in the world, real estate prices and rents have skyrocketed!

Housing is expensive

According to a study by the University of Bahcesehir, house purchase prices in Constantinople in a year they increased by 190%, in Antalya by 198% and in the whole country by 174%. Accordingly, rents in Istanbul increased by 147%, in Ankara by 150%, in Izmir by 160%, in Trabzon by 208% and in Antalya by 302%. That is why the government was forced to set a 25 percent cap on rent increases on existing contracts. For those that have expired, the new prices are a concern. Analysts note that the Erdogan government increased the base salary by almost 100% during 2022, but the rest of the salaries do not grow at the same pace, and only within one year the standard of living of the Turks fell sharply…

Basic goods are easily accessible

The same difficult situation has developed with essential goods. According to Good Party (Iyi Parti) research by Meral Aksener, a liter carton of shelf-stable milk cost £7.13 in November 2021, has now reached £15.5 and is expected to rise again in the coming days. days. A kilogram of tomatoes cost 7.36 pounds, and today their price has reached 19.9 pounds, that is, an increase over the year has reached 170%. A kilo of apples cost £5.38 last year and £14.9 this year, up 177%. A kilogram of sugar rose in price by 247.4%. This data is causing concern in the government camp, which is trying to show the work done from 2002 to the present, which is not at all small, but also to promise better days in the next five years. Turkey’s TOGG electric car (which has yet to be priced), Turkey’s first nuclear power plant in the Akuyu region, and drones are some of the achievements that are constantly on display.

Income

Political scientists emphasize that Erdogan’s great advantage, which was his performance in the economy, is now, in the election campaign, considered his weak point. From 2002 to 2018, Turkish per capita income tripled from $3,000 to $10,000, and today, according to DEVA party president Ali Babacan, it could fall below $7,500! Ali Babacan was Erdogan’s successful finance minister.

One of the points that the Turkish president mentioned in his speeches was the situation that had developed in the country before 2002. Indeed, he changed the image of Turkey in relation to the past. However, for the first time, this election will see the vote of six million young voters who know nothing about Turkey’s difficult years and today see their lives becoming more difficult, and most of them say they would like to go abroad in search of a better future. These young people will need to be convinced by the government apparatus to achieve the coveted percentage of 50.1% and win the elections.

Gesture, turkey and Türkiye

As a symbolic gesture of goodwill, the State Department announced yesterday that it will largely stop using the term Turkey for Turkey, adopting the word Türkiye instead, as requested by Ankara. The issue was raised in 2021 by Tayyip Erdogan, who called on all countries based on the Latin alphabet to use the term Türkiye as the word Turkey also refers to turkey, although colloquially it is often used to refer to stupid people. At the request of the Turkish embassy in Washington, the term Türkiye was adopted in a joint communiqué between the two countries to refer to their cooperation aimed at economic strangulation of the Islamic State, State Department spokesman Ned Price said. The US Pentagon has been using the term since last August. However, Ned Price clarified that while the term “Turkey” would henceforth be used by Americans when referring to official or bilateral documents, one could continue to use the term “Turkey” when dictated by the need to “be understood by the general public”. . Of the rest of the English-speaking countries, the Australian, Indian, Canadian and New Zealand embassies in Ankara use the term Türkiye, while the UK, Ireland and South America stick to the older name for now.