ISTANBUL – Afflicted by restrictions on his tobacco shop, Ozgur Akbas helped organize a demonstration in Istanbul last month to protest what he called unfair rules imposed on traders during the pandemic.
“There are many friends who have closed,” he said in an interview. “And some are on the verge of suicide.”
The Turks were battling the currency’s fall and double-digit inflation two years ago when the pandemic hit in March, dramatically worsening the country’s deep recession. Nine months later, when a second wave of the virus spreads across Turkey, there are signs that a significant part of the population is overburdened with debt and increasingly hungry.
MetroPoll Research, a respected research organization, found in a recent survey that 25% of respondents said they could not meet their basic needs. Akbas said he sees this daily among his clients.
“People are at the point of explosion,” he said.
For President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who this year drew attention at home and abroad with aggressive foreign policy and military interventions, things suddenly peaked in November.
The government admitted it was underestimating the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in Turkey by not recording asymptomatic cases, and new data revealed record levels of infection in the country.
The Turkish lira suffered a record depreciation – a drop of more than 30% against the dollar this year – and foreign currency reserves have been drained dramatically. Along with double-digit inflation, the country now faces a balance of payments crisis, the Moody’s Investor Service said recently.
The crisis comes when Erdogan is about to lose a powerful ally when President Trump leaves office next month. Turkey is already facing sanctions from the United States for the purchase of a Russian anti-missile defense system and the European Union for drilling gas in waters claimed by Cyprus. Mr. Trump was instrumental in postponing Washington’s sanctions until this month.
Mr. Erdogan was remarkably slow to congratulate President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. for his victory. Analysts expect the Biden government to be stricter on Erdogan’s advances in human rights and democratic standards.
To deal with Turkey’s spiraling economy, Erdogan recently acted with a cruelty that is often carefully hidden from view. He appointed a new head of the Central Bank, and when Erdogan’s finance minister, who is also his son-in-law and apparent heir, resigned in objection, the president surprised many by accepting the resignation and replacing him.
The president then promised economic and judicial reforms, and even considered the possibility of freeing political prisoners – which some in his own party advocate for improving relations with Europe and the United States.
In mid-December, Erdogan announced a new aid package to deal with small businesses and traders for three months. Last weekend, he went to a bakery to do some shopping in a show of support for traders.
But critics described Erdogan’s various maneuvers as too little, too late.
Former finance minister Berat Albayrak may have been a convenient scapegoat – little is known about what really happened inside the Presidential Palace – but his dramatic fall from grace and complete disappearance of public life indicate a more serious course correction. . It seems that the economic crisis and the consequences for Erdogan’s own destiny have become paramount concerns.
Mehmet Ali Kulat, who conducts opinion polls for political parties, including Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, said the president assists opinion polls assiduously.
“He pays attention mainly to how things are reflected in society,” said Kulat.
Recent opinion polls show that Erdogan’s AK Party’s position has fallen to its lowest point in 19 years that it has been in charge of Turkish politics, hovering around 30%, according to MetroPoll. That figure suggests that the party’s alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party would not be able to guarantee Erdogan the 50 percent of the votes needed to win a presidential election.
“The next elections will not be tough,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a senior member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “There is a good chance he will lose unless he expands his coalition or manages to appeal to people who voted for the opposition.”
“The chances of him being re-elected are less than 50%,” she said. “So, finally,” she added, the question is, “Is he smart enough?”
The MetroPoll poll found that the majority of Erdogan’s own supporters, and 63% of respondents in general, believe that Turkey is going in a worse direction rather than a better one.
These numbers are confirmed by what aid organizations are seeing on the ground.
Hacer Foggo, founder of the Deep Poverty Network, a group that helps street vendors and informal workers, said that in her nearly 20 years of work to alleviate urban poverty in Turkey, she had never seen such suffering.
When the first blockade began in March, she started receiving calls from people begging for help to feed their families. Street vendors and scrap collectors were particularly hard hit.
“When they say there is no food at home, it means that there is also no food at the neighbor’s house,” she said.
Its network has helped 2,500 families in Istanbul, combining donors with families to help them buy groceries and diapers for children. Her voice failed when she described a mother who said that her baby had decreased in size in diapers.
“A baby must be gaining weight, not decreasing,” said Foggo. Other women could no longer breastfeed for lack of food, she said, and more people were forced to hunt for scarce food in the trash.
“I am 52 years old and this is the biggest crisis I have ever seen,” she said.
Economic problems started before the pandemic, she said, but she blamed local and national governments directly for their lack of strategy to tackle growing poverty and not improve social services.
Indeed, the economic downturn came after Erdogan tightened the reins of the country, including the economy, by acquiring new powers under a new presidential system inaugurated in 2018. International monitors cite these changes as the main reason for his alarm about the economic downturn in the country. parents.
“Turkey’s weak and deteriorating governance is a fundamental credit weakness that has underpinned our decision to downgrade Turkey’s rating on several levels since the introduction of the presidential system in mid-2018,” Moody’s said in a report this month.
Akbas, the shopkeeper who runs the tobacconist, described two elderly customers who entered his store in a wealthy part of the capital, Ankara, one day last week, as an illustration of how the skyrocketing inflation affected people.
A woman asked if she could buy a single egg. The second woman, who was well dressed, asked if he had free bread. Stunned, he filled a bag for her.
“Retirees are in a very bad situation,” he said. “What I’m hearing from people is’ Enough. We have it up to our necks, we cannot make money ‘, and the 70s and 80s are saying they are going to throw themselves on the street ”.