devastation in turkey--8/11/26
Today's selection -- from From Life Itself by Suzy Hansen. In the 2000s, it was inflation and the neglect of its agricultural base that brought economic havoc to the country of Turkey:
"Ismail had been expecting that $1 would be worth 8 liras that year. School would start, people wouldn't be able to afford expenses for their children, and mothers wouldn't be able to bring food into their homes. ‘I say it again, by October it will be eight.’
“He was close. The lira shot to six that autumn. When I moved there in 2007, it had been 1.4. Suddenly food became so expensive, people stopped buying kilos of vegetables. They bought them one by one instead. Turkey had once been a proud agricultural economy, and Turks loved their fresh food. Young people, like their migrant parents before them, still loved to visit their country villages and return with fresh tomatoes and jars of honey and lumps of Aegean cheese. The country used to be self-sufficient in food, but not now, not since the liberalization process that started with Turgut Özal and continued with Erdoğan. They imported lentils, Ismail said. They imported refined wheat. They imported chickpeas! They imported livestock! They gave tax breaks and made it easier to import these things than to produce them. The food system was broken. They needed foreign currency to buy petrol, but now they also needed it to buy food.
“Decades of industrialization, migration to the cities, abandonment of farmers' subsidies, and entry into the global economy had decimated the country's agricultural production, forcing farmers into factories and mines to make a living. Perhaps this had worked while Turkey's economy expanded. But now the country's debts were so huge, and the currency so weak, that by 2018 a financial crisis became a food crisis, the source of so much shame. Turks suddenly noticed not only how expensive the food was but how low quality their food had become.
"Now they are confronting America!’ Ismail said. To make matters worse, the new president, Trump, was fighting with Erdoğan over Andrew Brunson, an American pastor the Turks had jailed after the 2016 military coup because they thought he was in cahoots with the PKK and the Gülenists (because they thought everyone was in cahoots with the PKK and the Gülenists), Erdoğan wouldn't release him, so the Americans imposed sanctions on Turkish officials, which sent the lira tumbling even more. ‘My brother, we need to make peace with all the states of the world,’ Ismail said. ‘There's a saying, I think a foreigner said it: The sky is blue, the wheat is gold, how sweet is the taste of peace.
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| Turkish Lira banknotes |
“I'm the son of Turks. I'm a Turk,’ he continued. ‘Foreigners do not interest me. We fell out with America. What quarrel, ya. You broke up with them. Yesterday it was Greece. You fall out with everyone.' When Erdogan fought with America, he made it seem like he was standing up for not only Turkey, but the whole world. His courage made many Turks proud.
“'But what are you standing up to?' Ismail said. 'We are all fathers; we have to think of our children. I have two daughters; my hands have never been separated from them for forty years. I brought them up without complaining when there was a problem, financial or moral. The state is also a father. You will lead this nation. The children work and struggle, and they live in luxury. How can this be?'”
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