Turkey is amid the worst of economic crisis in the last two decades with consumer prices (inflation) soaring at 61.1% and its currency, Lira, remaining into a tailspin for quite some time leading to a steep depreciation, making imports costlier and swelling the value of its debt stock, which would bear on its debt servicing as well.
Analysts blame it on gross mismanagement by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan all through his rule while the Covid-19 pandemic and consequences of the Ukraine war have further intensified the crisis. The economy of Turkey is on the verge of collapse. Many Turkish people opine that the Erdoğan government must be held accountable for the mismanagement of the economy to halt it from profligacy,extravaganza and irresponsible expenditure from the state coffers on non-priority areas. Critics point out that while common citizens are suffering from economic devastation and high inflation, the excessive expenditures of the Palace continued.
The central government budget posted a deficit of TL 69 billion inMarch 2022, and expenditures increased by 102.3% on an annual basis, indicating deterioration in the budget outlook. Analysts also point out that there is least transparency in government expenditure with the rising “concealed service expenses” under President Erdoğan.
The concealed service expenses refer to President’s disguised appropriation expenditure that only President can use. In March these secret expenses recorded an all-time high of TL 788 million against the previous record of TL 463 million in June 2021. Total amount of disguised expenditure spent int he three months of this year was TL 1.14 billion. This is being taken as a cruel joke on the Turkish people whose sufferings are increasing exponentially.
The Turkish People are protesting very on and off against the misdemeanors of the government but the present authoritarian regime is suppressing people’s protests by using force instead of addressing and solving their problems. There has been increasing criticism of Turkey internationally on its poor human rights record. The state of freedom of expression in Turkey has remarkably worsened during Erdoğan’s regime which resorted to unprecedented government vigilance against the independent press and critics.
In the past 5years, countless journalists and intellectuals have been detained and many for an inordinately long time. On the other hand, there were allegations that many pro-government media outlets and the palpable ones were offered favours from the government and loans from public banks to promote President’s propaganda.
This deterioration is reflected even in Turkey’s poor rank on various parameters of freedom and democracy. Turkey’s rank in the fundamental rights index slipped to 117th place in 2021 from 101st place, according to World JusticeProject. Turkey was at 103rd place among 167 countries in 2021 in theDemocracy Index, being in the last place in the Western Europe region. In theWorld Happiness Index report, Turkey’s rank fell by 8 places to 112th.
Despite the Erdoğan government’s claim of a “zero tolerance for torture” of people in the country, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture of the Council of Europe noted increasingly large number of torture cases in Turkey. The present government also fails the empirical tests regarding its performance as against that in 2017. The Erdoğan administration witnessed a decline in national income to USD 803 billion in 2021 from USD 859 billion in 2017 while the per capita income decreased to USD 9,539 from USD 10,696.
Turkish Lira had declined to 14.64 against a dollar from 3.69, a depreciation of over 390%.Turkey’s short-term external debt stock totaled USD 130.5 billion (TL 1.91 trillion)at the end of February, a rise of 8.5% in a very short period compared to the end of 2021.The pain and misery of the people is further aggravated due to unprecedented increase in unemployment in the country by 22.4%.
The combination of high unemployment mixed with high inflation rates makes people’s life miserable. As incomes of the people melted due to high inflation it is very appalling to see people standing in long queue for cheap oil and even for bread in almost every part of the country. Some of the Turkish people find the recent tendency of the government to make friends of the former rivals and seek funds as offending and against the dignity of the country.
Turkey is trying to cajole the past rival the United ArabEmirates, besides taking steps for “normalization” with Egypt, Israel and Armenia.The wounds of mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic by the Turkish government are still fresh in the memories of the people, and therefore their protest against the government is intensifying. Nevertheless, Turkey has not learnt any lesson from the calamity that the Covid-19 writ on its people.
Among OECD member countries, Turkey allocates the least on the health sector ass hare of GDP (4.7%), which is far less than that of OECD standards. What could be the better evidence of lack of transparency in Turkish government machinery the deliberate failure by the Turkish Statistical Institute to disclose the number of deaths due to the Covid-19.