While I am writing these lines, it remains unclear who will become Turkey’s next president and which parties will have a majority in parliament.
The presidential and parliamentary election 2023 is a great occasion for the roughly 64 million Turkish voters and the Turkish opposition to unseat President Erdogan and his AK Party because, in the past 20 years, Turkey’s leading politician has moved from reformer, who offered growth to large parts of society, with the purchasing power increasing fourfold in a decade, to authoritarian ruler, who managed almost single-handedly to ruin large parts of society.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan (*1954) and his government not only mismanaged the response to the two February 2023 earthquakes and their aftermath, which cost the lives of over 50,000 people. Some two decades ago, Erdogan and the AK Party came to power after earthquakes had hit Turkey. They promised to implement stricter rules. However, after an Izmir earthquake, BBC News Türkçe reported in 2020 that 672,000 buildings in Izmir had benefited from building amnesties — for the payment of a fee, structures could be built without respecting new safety standards. The report stated the Turkish Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation was saying that, in 2018, over 50% of all buildings in Turkey (some 13 million!) were constructed in violation of regulations. In short, the government is co-resonsible for the high death toll of the two February 2023 earthquakes.
Entirely man-made is the economic and financial disaster: in April 2023, the official inflation rate in comparison with April 2022 stood at roughly 43%. Independent reports claim that, in reality, the Turkish year-on-year inflation is above 100%. Whatever the real number, Turkey has one of the world’s highest rates of inflation.
In addition, in 2014 €1 cost around 2.9 Turkish lira. In 2023, that number soared to 21.5 lira (report by Deutsche Welle in May 2023). The French TV program C dans l’air reported on May 12, 2023 that, in less than five years, the Turkish lira had lost 450% of its value. The Turkish lira is currently trading at the lowest level since its introduction in 2005.
The German Tagesschau reported on May 14, 2023 that the price of one kilogram of onions in the capital Ankara had increased 500% within the last 18 months. That’s why, in an election video seen by millions, the calm but dull opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu posed with a simple onion. The message was clear.
What has President Erdogan to do with this? A lot. As so many strongmen of this world, Recep Tayyip Erdogan considers himself a luminary and came forward with an “alternative” way to fight inflation and the economic and financial crisis: he advocated lower interest rates which allow companies to invest more. However, more credits lead to higher demand and ever higher inflation.
In March 2021, President Erdogan had fired the Governor of the Central Bank of Turkey (CBT) Naci Agbal because he had increased the interest rate from 17% to 19% (the right thing to do to curb inflation). The CBT is no longer independent and has to follow Erdogan’s “voodoo” financial policy of low interest rates amidst high inflation. As a result, Turkey’s central bank as well as Turkey’s entire financial policy have lost their credibility.
In 2021, the official growth rate was 11% and, in 2022, 3%. However, given the high inflation and the free fall of the Turkish lira, most people are much worse of today. The income per capita in Turkey shrank from $11,300 to $9,300.
In early 2023, considering the upcoming elections, the Turkish government decided to increase the minimal wage by 55% and the salaries of states employees by 30%. The IMF reported that, in the past five years, Turkish public debt had increased more than fourfold. According to a Febuary 27, 2023 Reuters report, gross government debt stands currently only at 38% of GDP, but is projected to grow fast.
The official Turkish unemployment rate stands at roughly 10%, the youth unemployment rate at 19%.
Under President Erdogan, there is no more press freedom in Turkey. Currently, not only 39 journalists sit in jail, but the Erdogan friendly press controls some 90% of all TV stations, newspapers. If President Erdogan thinks you insulted him, you may end up in jail, not only as a journalist.
The online media DarkWeb Haber reported that, from April until May 11, Erdogan got 48 hours and 45 minutes of airtime on the state-owned TV channel TRT. Opposition leader Kilicdaroglu ended up with only 41 minutes. The French journalist Ariane Bonzon said in C dans l’air that, in April 2023, Erdogan got some 32 hours of airtime on the public channel TRT, whereas opposition leader Kilicdaroglu ended up with 32 minutes. In short, the Turkish elections are far from fair.
At one point, Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to turn Turkey into a Sunni state for Turks, ignoring and trampling on the rights of minorities, other cultures, languages and religions, including Kurds, Armenians, Greek, Zazaki, trampling on Shia (Ja’fari), Alevi (opposition leader Kilicdaroglu is an Alevi), etc.
After the failed 2016 military coup, Erdogan blamed the Gülen mouvement, a former ally, and purged the military, the justice system, the police, the eductional system and more. He was so quick and arrested tens of thousands that it seems evident that Erdogan and his regime had prepared lists of thousands of people they wanted to arrest long before the putsch attempt.
Founded in 2001, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) initially offered to fight corruption and bring development to large parts of Turkish society living in poverty. Today, the AK Party as well as Erdogan and his family stand for massive corruption, incompetence, repression and the destruction of the promise of a better future for the large majority in Turkey.
Books about Erdogan at Amazon USA and at Amazon UK
Beauty items at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
President Erdogan. Photo: Wikipedia / Wikimedia / public domain.
Article added on May 14, 2023 at 22:05 German time.
