Ertuğrul Mavioğlu
The AKP-MHP fascist government’s significant defeat in the 31 March elections should primarily be attributed to their persistent policies of destruction and genocide against the Kurds.
The economic toll of longstanding conflict
For over 40 years, the ongoing war has resulted in the bloodshed of thousands of young people, the demolition of cities, the fragmentation of families, overcrowded prisons, exile, and endless tortures, turning life into hell in northern Kurdistan. However, the reality of the war was not limited to the state’s brutality against the Kurds. It also led to conditions of hunger and poverty that deeply affected all people in Turkey, increasing day by day. So much so that it condemned more than 90% of Turkey’s population to poverty and 60% to a life below the hunger threshold.
The continuous conflict over 40 years has not only escalated into the loss of thousands but also entrenched over 90% of Turkey’s populace in poverty, with a striking 60% living below the hunger line.
Public demands in the face of poverty
People were unable to meet their basic needs, feed themselves, or pay their rents and bills with the income they earned through hard work. To sustain their lives, they were forced to take loans from banks or accumulate debt on credit cards, mortgaging their futures. This situation became very evident before the elections. Workers and retirees in different cities of Turkey held demonstrations, trying to make their voices heard, with cries of “we are hungry” rising from all around. No government could ignore these demands before an election. However, the government failed to take any steps towards improvement, and that’s precisely where the problem lies.
The excessive spending on war policies, funds transferred to contractors, the burden of interest payments consuming up to 20% of the budget, and the pressure from international financial institutions to “pay your debts” had already besieged the government.
International loan quest hits a wall
Efforts to stabilise the economy through international loans were met with rejection, reflecting a significant lack of confidence in Turkey’s economic policies on a global scale.
To somewhat mitigate the situation, a delegation led by the Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek travelled extensively, seeking new loans. They knocked on the doors of the United Kingdom, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and many other countries. However, they returned empty-handed each time because there was no longer any confidence in the inconsistent policies followed by this government in international markets.
The financial downward spiral
As a direct result of the government’s policies of war and plunder, short-term debts had skyrocketed to 175 billion dollars, while the Central Bank’s reserves had plummeted to minus 65 billion dollars, excluding swaps, and the budget deficit had already exceeded 1.5 trillion lira in just the first three months of the year, leaving no resources to distribute to retirees and workers. Trying to solve the need for resources by printing money at the Central Bank was not a rational solution either, as it would turn the Turkish Lira into an even more worthless piece of paper.
With short-term debts reaching $175 billion, Central Bank reserves dropping to negative $65 billion, and a budget deficit surpassing 1.5 trillion lira in just a quarter, Turkey’s economic stability hangs by a thread.
In short, the Turkish economy had become a wreck, and all the data indicated that it was impossible for it to improve from one day to the next. Therefore, the government entered the 31 March elections as a team already defeated. Neither trustee voters nor ballot riggings could change this situation. And the verdict was clear on 31 March. In conditions where an average of 25 billion dollars per year, and a total of 1 trillion dollars over the last 40 years, was spent not on feeding the hungry or making retirees happy, but on trying to annihilate the Kurds, it could not have been otherwise.
The 1 trillion dollars collected from the people over 40 years was spent on bombing mountains and hills, demolishing cities and not just killing humans but also flowers, insects, wolves, birds, in other words – slaughtering nature.
Four decades of conflict with deep economic scars
The expenses Turkey has incurred for its war policies over the past 40 years, along with the interest paid for this reason, have now exceeded five times the total budget revenues for 2024. Knowing just this fact alone renders the question of why millions of households are in deep poverty meaningless. Indeed, the Bureau of Labour Unions and Türk-İş calculated the poverty and hunger thresholds for a family of four in March 2024 separately.
A country grappling with poverty
When the average of the data released by both unions is taken into consideration, it is found that the hunger threshold is approximately 20,000 lira, and the poverty threshold is 60,000 lira. This means that a retiree earning 10,000 lira only reaches half of the hunger threshold, and a minimum wage earner making 17,002 lira lives below the hunger threshold.
The current economic conditions reveal that a retiree’s income is barely half of what is needed to cross the hunger threshold, while minimum wage earners fall short of securing basic necessities, illustrating stark economic disparities.
A retiree family needs the combined salaries of 6 retirees to reach the poverty threshold. However, the peoples living in Turkey have always shown great wisdom in proving that they are not helpless. Many governments that implemented genocide policies against the Kurds before the AKP-MHP fascist government came and went, and eventually were erased from the political scene. Because those who wage war against the peoples always lose in the end. History, albeit late, delivers its verdict and allocates a suitable place in the political garbage heap to all bloodsucking tyrants and dictators, just as it does in Turkey.
Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, born in 1961 in Adapazarı, Turkey, fought against the fascist junta of 12 September 1980, which led to him being imprisoned for a total of 8 years between 1980 and 1991. He graduated from Marmara University with a degree in Journalism and Public Relations. Despite interruptions due to his imprisonment, he has been working as a journalist since 1985. Alongside the eight volumes of books he has published, he has numerous news stories, columns and articles published in various magazines and newspapers. He continues to be tried in Turkish courts for his documentary film Bakur, co-directed with his colleague Çayan Demirel in 2013, which was shot in PKK guerrilla camps. His latest book, Bakur Notes, was published by Aryen Publications in 2013.
