WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH TURKEY?

APRIL 3RD, 2022

Edited by: Cara Räker.

Illustration by: Kristel Jaago.

I still remember the day my grandmother called our home, her voice shaking: “He got elected, tell your mother.” 

The “he” she was talking about was Abdullah Gül, the 11th president of Turkey. I was 7 years old. That was pretty much the first time I remember being made aware of politics, let alone danger sirens for my home. 

Everything kind of went downhill after that. The more I grew up, the worse my country’s condition and reputation got. There was the comfort of “hanging in there” because things weren’t too bad, so people stayed silent to the small annoying modifications the government made until those in charge became too powerful. 

That’s when we started to get defeated by the people that govern us. That’s when they started polarising us, silencing us, blinding us.

So, without further ado, let me tell you what the f*** is wrong with Turkey. Or at least some of it. 

THERE’S A FINANCIAL CRISIS

You might have already heard about it, but in 2021 Turkey’s economy truly went to shit. Rising inflation, bottomless debt and the falling lira caused a full-grown financial crisis. 

This started before the coronavirus pandemic, around the mid-2010s, but was amplified through president Erdoğan’s decision to lower interest rates. What Turkey has been experiencing since the mid-2010s is stagflation, which means a low rate of economic growth combined with inflation. It is often associated with high percentages of unemployment and a high rank in the world misery index, in which Turkey ranked 20th out of 156 countries in 2022. 

The central bank has been lowering interest rates in an attempt to increase production and fight against unemployment, but with a vulnerable economy and currency, this measure is beyond “state suicide” as many economists and articles have advised. Without going too into detail regarding why Turkey’s economy went from relative prosperity during the early 2000s to what it is now — here are the results.

DEVALUATION OF THE LIRA

One dollar is now worth as much as sixteen Turkish lira. According to the New York Times, annual inflation reached a ridiculous 36% in December 2021, and according to the TUIK  (Turkish Statistics Institute), the projected total inflation rate reached 48,69% this January. That means, compared to 2021, life is about twice as expensive now as it was then.

Because of this, Turkey, a mostly agricultural nation, has been experiencing a decline in production due to the rising costs of fertilisers and seeds. Why should you care? Because Turkey is embedded in global trade just as much as any other country. And it’s part of a customs union with the EU. 

A simple example of how this can affect you personally is rooted in the fact that Turkey produces 70% of the world’s hazelnuts. With the falling lira, production is more expensive because hazelnut farmers struggle to import fertilisers and seeds. The result? Nutella producer Ferrero, who buys a whopping one-third of Turkey’s hazelnuts, struggles to meet their demands, according to Business Insider. 

This means that you might struggle to find and enjoy your favourite chocolate spread for breakfast sometime later this year. 

COLLAPSING CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Another issue shaking Turkey’s economy is towering government debt. While there are many reasons, one of them is an ill-managed investment strategy. 

For example, with excess capital to spend in times of relative financial prosperity during the early 2000s, the Turkish government focussed on the construction industry. The whole of Istanbul went through what they called an ‘urban transformation.’ In a short amount of time, a lot of Turkey’s capital was channelled into the restoration of older buildings to build up GDP growth. 

The thing about construction, however, is that it’s not the most sustainable industry to keep a country’s GDP up. Especially if most of the material and labour is outsourced. The bridges and highways Erdoğan’s government built were outsourced to mainly European or Middle Eastern investors in exchange for the promise of a certain number of customers that would generate profits for the new constructions. 

If that number was not reached within a certain time, the government had to pay for the remaining promised revenue. When the ticket prices rose due to the devaluation of the Turkish lira, the consumers faced insane prices for commuting through the Eurasian tunnel, lowering the number of travellers even more and putting the government into even more debt with their European and Middle Eastern investors. 

MISINFORMATION 

Funny thing is, I took economics when I was in high school and we had an assignment where we recorded the monthly price of each item we selected in our “consumer basket” to calculate inflation, and the rough rates we were calculating in 2018 were around 40%. The inflation rate TUIK reports each year is crooked and miscalculated because the institute changes the items in the consumer basket to keep the calculated rates as low as possible. 

I’d like to share this passage of a news article posted by Daily Sabah, commonly known as the “pro-government media channel”:

Turkey is managing a financial discipline based on high growth and high tax income and curbing the rise in unemployment. Markets should know the following: If you bypass known errors in the economic literature and respond to these manipulative calls, you will drag the Turkish economy into high unemployment, high deficits and severe recession with high inflation. Will we wrap Turkey into this trap?

I would like to point out the delusion in this passage, which sheds direct light on Turkey’s totalitarian influence on the media, especially in remote regions.

TURKEY, THE ‘BIGGEST JAILER OF JOURNALISTS IN THE WORLD’

One of the most notable expressions of Turkey’s shift towards authoritarianism is the repeated violations of human rights. Already during the mid-2010s, the Erdoğan regime began to crack down violently on protests. 

The most notable example is the Gezi Square protest — a first, violent demonstration of what would await state dissidents in the future. The peaceful sit-in protest concerned the planned demolition of Gezi Park, one of the last remaining natural parks in Istanbul.

Throughout the park, protestors had set up tents, trying to protect the beloved public gardens. It can be argued that the brutal police shutdown of the protest changed the political climate in Turkey. Tents were set on fire, protestors were arrested or violently dispersed with tear gas or pressurised water. In response to this act of police violence, more and more protests flared up around the country. 

Since then, protestors, students, academics and journalists who criticise the regime have seen a drastic curtailment of their freedoms, which snowballed even more upon the 2016 coup d’etat attempt (for which we need a whole other 2000 words). 

Under the guise of ‘anti-terrorism law’, Turkey has since arrested more journalists than any other country in the world. ‘The biggest jailer of journalists in the worldÄ has also shut down at least 180 media outlets, according to Amnesty International. 

OUR DEMOCRACY IS CRUMBLING 

In 2021, Turkey was listed 106th out of 167 in the democracy index released by The Economist Intelligence Unit. Turkey, therefore, falls under the “‘hybrid regime category” right above the totalitarian model. This index has been falling gradually, yet took a hard hit following the public referendum in 2017.

This landmark referendum essentially increased the power of one person, and one person only: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Decided by a narrow majority, Erdoğan now holds the following powers: full control of the state budget, full control of the military, the power to appoint judges, the power to dissolve the entire parliament and the power to extend his ruling term. 

If you want to understand why Turkey can hardly be considered a democracy anymore, you have to talk about Erdoğan. 

Again, the story of Erdoğan’s rise to power is detailed and complex. What you must know is that his supporters continue to cling to the idea of Erdoğan as an economic reformer, who has pulled Turkey out of economic misery and paved the way toward prosperity. This is more or less true.

During the first ten years under Erdoğan’s rule, Turkey was thriving economically. Through greater engagement with external economic parties and liberal economic policies inflation rates were going down and the market was booming. Accession talks were picked up with the European Union. The tourism industry in particular was a great asset to the Turkish economy, especially with Istanbul being chosen as the 2010 Cultural Capital of Europe. 

At the same time, Erdoğan is known for moving from a more secular system to a more Islamic-oriented and authoritarian regime. Women were allowed to wear headscarves again, Mosques were released from state control and religion became a larger part of the school curriculum. This appealed greatly to the religious Muslim majority that felt ignored by pre-Erdoğan secular elitism. 

I distinctly remember the formation of his fanatic followership from a vivid memory of a woman’s video from one of Erdoğan’s rallies: She was frantically screaming:  “We can only be the hairs on Erdoğan’s ass” —  which, honestly, was already too much for me in 2013.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS ABUSES 

Under Erdoğan, women’s rights have also experienced a drastic hit. This is especially drastic considering that in the 1920s and 1930s, under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, women were granted rights far ahead of their time: the right to education, divorce, custody and inheritance.

Erdoğan, with an emphasis on the revival of Islamic law, takes a conservative stance toward women’s rights. In 2021, Turkey made headlines by opting out of the (ironically) so-called Istanbul Convention, the first binding international agreement protecting women from domestic abuse.

It might come as no surprise, that violence against women has been continuously increasing since 2002 when Erdoğan first came to power. The numbers speak for themselves. In 2018, 440 women in Turkey were murdered by their husbands. This number increased to 474 in 2019, the highest recorded murder rate in a decade. To top that, 26 women officially fell victim to homicide in January 2022 alone. 

Overall, the Global Gender Gap Report ranks Turkey at 133 out of 156 countries. Unsurprisingly, the happiness index has also been falling for a while, the country stands at 104th in the world in 2021 as opposed to 69th in 2017.

On a personal note, I and another friend of mine tried to explain what it’s like to be a woman in Turkey by recalling a distinct pose that almost all girls do when they are walking down a street at night —  frowning brows, angry eyes, closed body posture, firm and fast steps. 

It’s to protect ourselves from people that may catcall or follow us. If we accidentally make eye contact with someone, we’d keep staring at them like “what are you looking at?” so we’d appear tough before a potential assailant. 

It’s fucking exhausting. 

SO, WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH TURKEY THEN?

Writing this small essay took a serious emotional toll on me already, to the point that my lovely editor had to take over and help me tackle my demons about the dark side of my country. This is barely scratching the surface, though. 

I can talk about the failing public schools and the increasing levels of illiteracy, which will pave way for more fanaticism due to religion overpowering the value of education. I can talk about the Syrian border. I can talk about the Armenian genocide. 

I can talk about the sexual assault rate inflicted by imams amongst preteen boys who attend religion classes. I can talk about Enes Kara, who committed suicide because of these community housings’ strict religious rules borderline assault and fueled oppression. I can talk about our old minister of economics, who was married to Erdoğan’s daughter and currently has a video of one of his globally streamed presentations on a pornhub page with the title “Young man fucks entire Turkish economy in less than a minute”. 

On the other hand, I might be at risk of having my name on this article, so, excuse my fear for my family. I’m hoping that with the upcoming elections, something might change for once. I believe a lot of people do.