Cumhuriyet Columnist Mustafa Balbay explains the effects of Turkey’s inflation crisis on especially fixed income earners and calls AKP, the IMF of Turkey.
Nowadays, the prices of almost every product increase very rapidly. You can’t even buy anything successively at the same price.
A customer asks the seller:
– Has the cost of the product waiting in your warehouse increased?
“No, but,” he says, continuing:
– When I sell this product, I won’t be able to replace it even at its sale price!
He burdens the cost on the buyer to save himself. Those on fixed incomes suffer the most. As the concept suggests, their income is fixed, but the increase in the prices is highly fluctuating.
Citizens are baffled by the extraordinary rise in almost all types of products. So that the question, “How much does it cost?” has been replaced with “How much did it cost?
The price increase is certain, but customers can’t guess how much is it!
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Turkey had become somewhat accustomed to seeking help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in times of crisis, when it was hard to find quick cash, when it became impossible to pay off the debt with debt, and when international financial institutions declared the Turkish government “unreliable”, the IMF stepped in.
IMF has always brought austerity policies into the minds of citizens!
After the 2001 crisis, a strict IMF program was implemented. The program started under the Ecevit government and continued under the AKP government. Thus, it was the pre-AKP government, that had to put the harsh policies into practice, while the AKP government was the beneficiary of the program. But this time the ruling AKP is entirely responsible for the current economic outlook.
Under the management of the new Minister of Treasury and Finance Mehmet Şimşek, the price of everything from fees to taxes, petrol to diesel has been raised. On the other hand, the increases that fixed-income earners receive will not even cover the VAT on their expenses. Moreover, they equalize everyone at the minimum wage and then at the minimum salary, thus canceling out the value of mental labor.
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We do not want Turkey to be a puppet in the hands of international financial institutions. We want Turkey to make its economic program, but today such a scenario doesn’t exist.
What do we have?
Misery for the nation, pleasure for the state!
While the nation suffers from price increases worse than the IMF policies, the government continues its policy of “no saving under the name of honor”.
“Sacrifice” is shared in complete equality (!)
“Sacrifice” for the nation, “profit” for the government!
It is the same practice in the tax system:
Destroy those who give and forgive those who don’t!
The state already collects 70 percent of taxes indirectly. In other words, it taxes every kind of movement. Thus, for example, 20 percent VAT on cleaning supplies is paid at the same rate by both the minimum wage earner and the rent rich!
Turkey is getting poorer…
We are all being robbed…
While doing this, the government makes people forget the money coming out of their pockets and calculate the money going into their pockets.
People are asking:
Is there no one to supervise this government, to say “Stop”, to hold it to account for its wrongdoings?
