Story Highlights Record High 39% of Turks Considered ‘Suffering’ Record Low 37% Approved National Government in December
WASHINGTON, DC — Turkey’s inflation rate reached nearly 70% in April, the highest in nearly two decades, as prices for food and other essentials rose further. This puts added pressure on Turkish adults who were already feeling financial pain. A survey conducted by Gallup in December 2021 found that nearly 4 out of 10 Turkish people rate their lives so poorly that they can be described as “hard,” the highest percentage in more than 15 years. Ta.
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Based on the Cantril Self-Fixed Effort Scale, Gallup categorizes individuals as “thriving,” depending on how they evaluate their current and future lives on a ladder scale with step numbers from 0 to 10. It is categorized as “struggling” or “suffering.” People who rate their current life and expected life in 5 years as 4 or less are classified as suffering.
Inflation was weighing down Turks’ incomes even before recent difficulties.
Last December, a majority of Turkish adults (56%) reported that they found it difficult or very difficult to live on their household income, and this was due to the spread of COVID-19. ) was 17 percentage points higher than in December 2020, at the height of the pandemic. It was higher than any time since 2013.
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Recent economic challenges have only exacerbated this pain. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Turkey’s Black Sea neighbor and key to the country’s food supply, has caused commodity prices to soar and further destabilize global energy and food markets. In the face of these rising prices, the Turkish government continues to pursue a strategy of keeping interest rates low rather than raising them, as is often the case when it comes to combating inflation.
Exorbitant food costs reduce living standards for many
From the fall of 2021 to the end of the year, around 6 in 10 Turks reported that there was a time in the past year when they did not have enough money to buy food. This is the highest level in Gallup’s trend and significantly higher than the 35% who said they did not have enough money for food in the past 12 months as of December 2020.
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Just as Turkey is reporting record levels of adults having difficulty buying food, satisfaction with living standards likewise fell to an all-time low late last year. Satisfaction with living standards has nearly halved from 68% in 2017 to 34% in October 2021.
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Türkiye’s economic slump erodes trust in government
Confidence in the Turkish government hit an all-time low of 37% in December 2021 as the economic fallout continues. This is the lowest since Gallup began polling in Turkey in 2005 and reflects the decline under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Turkish citizens’ confidence in their government fell 18 points in December compared to 2020, when Turkey avoided some of the worst economic effects of the global pandemic.
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The AKP, in power since 2002, won the trust of more than 49% of Turkish citizens from 2007 to 2020. This level of trust was based, at least in part, on strong economic growth guided by liberal economic policies and technocratic expertise. From 2005 to 2020, Turkey’s GDP growth rate tended to significantly exceed the global growth rate.
The government’s ineffectual response to the economic slowdown in recent years has shaken investor and public confidence, which is at its lowest level since the banking crisis that first brought the AKP to power.
conclusion
There is only a little more than a year left until Turkey’s once-every-five-year parliamentary and presidential elections in June 2023, but the country’s sluggish economy is already taking center stage, offering new avenues for the country’s opposition parties. and influence government policy far beyond the Turkish central bank.
President Tayyip Erdoğan’s attempts to get closer to the Gulf monarchies and Israel, and even normalization talks with Armenia, are seen in light of Turkey’s current economic weakness and need to obtain foreign investment and trade deals. It can be seen from Meanwhile, migratory tensions are worsening in the world’s largest refugee-hosting country as living standards plummet. Both the government and its main opposition party have made unrealistic promises to relocate millions of Syrians to northwest Syria, where Turkish-backed militias are in control.
The economic challenges facing Turkey are to some extent shaped by global trends beyond Turkey’s control. Surging inflation has proven a thorny issue for policymakers in many countries recovering from the pandemic, while turmoil from the Ukraine-Russia conflict is also affecting commodity markets far beyond Turkey. But the Turkish government’s monetary policy is likely only to further fuel the fires of inflation in a crisis of largely home-grown origins. Turks now rate their lives and living standards worse than at any time in 16 years of public opinion polling, but the impacts of this crisis may ultimately reach beyond Turks’ pockets.
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