Istanbul, Ankara Tahir Devrim ran a restaurant for cig kofte, a kind of vegetable patty, in Istanbul for many years. At the beginning of February he had to close the shop. He stuck a note to the shop window with large letters on it: “It wasn’t Covid-19 that got us, it was our electricity bill!” Next to it is a copy of the electricity meter with a four-digit bill for January.
A fate that is currently hitting small businesses in Turkey in particular. The culprit is an increase in electricity prices by the government in Ankara at the turn of the year of up to 100 percent per electricity customer.
Protests erupt across the country. Pensioners took to the streets in Izmir on Wednesday, and demonstrators roamed the streets of Istanbul on Thursday.
Celebrities also comment on the never-ending inflation, such as the famous comedian Cem Yilmaz. “Anyone who doesn’t feel the ever-increasing cost of living is either a thief or completely insane.”
The employees of the telecommunications group Digitürk protested earlier in the week. They had received a 17 percent wage increase from their employer – but it wasn’t enough for them.
“We were electrocuted”
Everyone is affected: consumers, employees, employers and pensioners. “We have been electrocuted and have to close,” a shopkeeper wrote on the closed shutters of his telecommunications products store. Including two copies of the electricity bills from January 2021 and January 2022. With roughly the same consumption, the price of the older electricity bill is 317 lira, a year later it is 631 lira.
Inflation in Turkey is rampant. Officially, according to the statistics office, the inflation rate in January was 48.69 percent, after 36 percent in December and 21.3 percent in November. Even the new finance minister, Nureddin Nebati, does not expect any changes until April.
The lira lost almost half of its value in the fourth quarter of last year. This had pushed up import prices for commodities such as crude oil and gas. This has now ensured that basically everything is becoming more expensive and that economic recovery is in jeopardy.
When a restaurant owner has to pay more for the electricity bill, they raise the prices of their products. If the customers then stay away because they can no longer afford the dishes, he has to close. A phenomenon that is currently permeating the entire Turkish economic cycle.
The municipal water company of the Aegean metropolis of Izmir, Izsu, paid 337 million Turkish lira for electricity last year. For 2022, the company expects 800 million lira.
Even in Hakkari, in the far southeast of the country on the border with Iran and Iraq, where fruit and vegetables are mostly brought to the villages by delivery trucks, prices are rising. Cucumbers now cost 25 lira per kilo there, down from around 7 lira a year ago. The price of eggplant has doubled to 29 lira, that of green pepper has almost tripled to 28 lira.
The culprits are the higher prices for petrol and diesel and the poor harvest in spring. “We can’t do anything,” explains a supplier, “we have to pay more at the gas station and also at the wholesale market.”
Groceries have become massively more expensive. The price of eggplant has doubled to 29 lira, that of green peppers has almost tripled to 28 lira.
(Photo: imago images/GocherImagery)
Because many people are afraid of further price increases, panic buying is becoming more common. According to a survey by a local institute, two-thirds of those surveyed bought products in stock to forestall a price increase.
The government had watched the lira fall for too long before taking an unconventional measure. Head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised that lira savings contracts in Turkish accounts will be paid out when due according to the current exchange rate. That should discourage savers from investing their money in dollars and euros, which would have hurt the lira rate even more.
The lira crisis has stopped, but prices continue to rise
In fact, the lira has been stable ever since. But the prices keep going up. A baker in the capital Ankara publicly apologizes to his customers. “We are ashamed, but we can no longer cope with the constant price increases for the manufacture of our products.”
In a small supermarket not far from that bakery, the first thing customers see is a poster they have written themselves: “Please don’t argue with me about the price increases. I am not responsible for it.”
The opposition speaks of an “Erdogan crisis”.
(Photo: AP)
The opposition reacts irritably to the price increases and exploits the issue. The head of the Republican People’s Party CHP, Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu, called for civil disobedience on Twitter.
“I will no longer pay my electricity bill until Erdogan reverses his price hike,” he wrote, urging the public to do the same. “Only together can we end this atrocity.”
The head of the nationalist Iyi party, Meral Aksener, draws comparisons with the Turkish financial crisis in 2001. A clear allusion, because a year later Turks were so upset by the consequences and the poor crisis management that they were the opposition candidates in the parliamentary elections had elected: Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“The current crisis is much bigger,” believes Aksener, who has not yet launched her own program for an economic policy, “and it will go down in history as the Erdogan crisis.”
More: Deutsche Welle: Trouble in Turkey