“The short-sighted people who govern the country call it a fee, but it is not a fee at all,” said journalist Fatih Altaïr, commenting on the debate over the increase in international departure fees from 150 liras to 3,000 liras. “You have enough money to go abroad, you give me 3,000 TL tax,” he commented.
In an article today, Altair said this was a restriction on the freedom to travel, saying: “We’d love to debate whether passport fees restrict ‘constitutional freedoms’, but for now this nonsense is on the table.”
Altair said Turkey was the country with the highest passport fees and that tourists also paid visa fees, and that the opposition should take the “exit fee” issue to the Constitutional Court.
Altairi continued:
“Of course, calling for a terrible increase in this tax is also an admission of the government’s incompetence and the terrible situation it has brought to this country, because this tax was created in 2001, when the economy was at its worst,” and it was applied as $50 on that day. So, the economic situation today is 2001. “We need this money so much that we want to increase it to $100 because it’s worse than that.” Even during the 2001 crisis, our economy was in a better state and better managed.
Of course, we are not in a position to compare Ecevit with Erdogan. Of course, today we need much more money. There were no Boeing 747, A 340, A 330 aircraft or Mercedes aircraft under Ecevit’s jurisdiction. It cost millions of dollars to take off these aircraft. How can this “reputation” be preserved without the tributes we pay to it! ”
