The impact of the economic crisis on Türkiye’s electoral climate

According to the international group Tasnim news agency, municipal elections will be held in Turkey on Sunday and people This country is going to the polls while the US dollar has even risen above 32 lira. But this does not mean that the dollar will stop at this rate, and financial analysts expect that after the municipal elections, a new wave of inflation will hit the Turkish market and conditions will become more difficult for the people of this country.

Some of The Turkish media have announced that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of the Justice and Development Party, has a new plan for the day after the election to reduce the psychological effects of the increase in inflation.

He wants to use the same old and traditional strategy as before. His senior son-in-law named Brat Albayrak, by using the method of sending cheap dollar suitcases to the market, was able to keep the value of the dollar low for a while.

But this tactic cost the loss of 128 billion dollars of reserves. The Turkish currency ran out and the president had to fire his son-in-law and send him home. Now it has been reported that Erdogan also wants to make the dollar go from 32 lira to 28 lira for a short period of time. but it is not yet clear whether Finance and Finance Minister Mehmet Shimshek is willing to implement such a scenario or not. Because he had accepted this responsibility on the condition that the president would not interfere in financial decisions.

The price of food, clothing, medicine and the costs of the housing, energy and transportation sectors in Turkey, in the last two years It has risen unprecedentedly and experts say that in several areas, including food, prices with triple-digit inflation have made life difficult for tens of millions of Turkey’s 86 million people.

According to Turkish laws, mayors have a lot of authority in allocating budgets and credits, and as a result, the amount of financial and food support of the mayor to poor households is a factor that can significantly affect the election results.

Why is Turkey’s economic situation not interesting?

Erdogan’s continuous interference in making decisions monetary-financial of the Central Bank of Turkey, abandoning meritocracy in the selection of economic officials and entrusting the helm of big banks to the close friends of the president, adventurous foreign policy, government luxury and carrying out expensive demonstrative projects with no economic benefit in order to help the ruling party in elections, creating Rent and corruption networks and ignoring the principles of legal formalities of tenders and auctions, distancing from industry and agriculture, and valuing speculation and accumulation, are mentioned as the main factors that have caused the Turkish economy to fall into a critical state.

Erdogan started promoting the upstream document Vision 2023 since 2011. He said that in 2023 and on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey, he will make this country one of the top 10 economies in the world. But by the way, the people of Turkey experienced the most difficult living conditions in 2023. Now Turkey’s work has reached a point where it is even trying and negotiating to obtain loans of one or two billion dollars. Mehmet Şimşek, head of the economy, announced that Turkey will receive a source of 1.5 billion dollars to finance 3 separate projects in the framework of cooperation with the World Bank. and traveled to Kuwait, he emphasized their continuous efforts to finance the project from foreign financial institutions to institutions in the country. Europe (EBRD) considered it an important achievement for the earthquake-stricken region. > The closure of more than a thousand manufacturing and service companies in Turkey in the last 6 months of 2023 and the publication of the news of the bankruptcy of large companies in this country is a recurring news for the Turkish media. Recently, one of the food giants Turkey called Temat, which was known as the father of canning, has gone bankrupt. This 65-year-old company was established in the tire region of Izmir and used to export products to more than 30 countries in the world, but now it has gone bankrupt due to financial problems. which led to the end of Temat canned work. This company, unable to withstand these problems, declared bankruptcy a week ago.

In the technical, transportation, construction, textile, heavy industry, and service sectors, hundreds of large Turkish companies have gone bankrupt, some of which were among the largest financial, commercial, and industrial groups.

In the report extracted from the Bloomberg HT survey for March of Turkey, the annual inflation expectation was recorded at 69% and the average monthly inflation was set at 3.5%.

Another issue that The mind of those who know the market is occupied by the fact that Turkey currently has good relations with Russia and buys oil and gas from this country at a low price, but it is predicted that this situation will not continue in the coming fall and with rising The price of fuel and energy in Turkey, inflation will rise again. /11/18/1402111816125539429344194.jpg”/>
In the end, it is necessary to point out that most analysts believe that the economic crisis and unprecedented inflation in Turkey will have a significant effect on the election results. But in small cities, due to the specific social characteristics, such a possibility is out of mind.

They say, in many provinces of Turkey, family, family and tribal relations still affect the success or failure of a mayor. Lays. But probably in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, this variable cannot have much impact.

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