Wow, there is lot of serious discussions going on. But given the topic of defence industry has already came up, I am curious to know how avarage Turkish people feels about it.
Given, last decade was an astonishing success for the industry, is public also feels equally enthusiastic about it? How high is general awareness on the subject matter?
Do they prioritize it on other national achievements? Does success in defence industry overshadow other problems?
@dBSPL @what et al.
No, it doesn't overshadow it. But actually there is no simple yes or no answer to this question. Let me explain a little bit what I meant by unique in my message above:
Of course, the country has very urgent and burning problems. Foremost among them is the CB's incredible printing of money to suppress the dollar. This has caused a vicious circle of inflation. Let me give you a concrete example, the movement of the dollar was slowed down after the implementation of currency hedged deposits and dollar quotas for exporters, that is, to some extent the market was intervened by the state, but even in this picture, the PPI reached 100% on an annual basis. There has been a false spring in the stock market due to the devaluation, but overall the problem is very big. The current export boom seems to have reached its limit.
Interest rates are falling, but banks and financial institutions that benefit from this in practice are increasing their profitability, but the picture is very, very different in retail loans. And, the households indebtedness ratio continues to break records.
Also, the consumer inflation in the country is overshadowed because inflation basket is similar to that of European countries. The real inflation is in food prices and housing costs, not in cultural and some specific service areas, or some consumption items that are not consumed by low-income people. The upper income group and the lower income group feel inflation at different rates, and what the lower income group feels is almost hyperinflation.
Since January 2022 (the currency attack and the subsequent rapid escalation of inflation), the country's most important problem has been the economy. The CB, in the direct intervention of the presidency, has chosen to prioritize protecting growth over directly suppressing inflation with the interest rate policies. This has started to create an extraordinary hole in the treasury. In practice, the cost has been much larger than if interest rates had to rise. The CB prioritized suppressing the dollar. The main instrument here is the guaranteeing the exchange rate difference in deposit interest rates.In practice, what you have in your deposit account is dollars/euros/gold that earn interest in TL. This would also explain why the TCB is one of the world's largest gold buyers.
*
Anyway, I don't want to go into the details of the issue, the economic problem in the country is already known to everyone who is interested in TR politics. What I really want to write about is the difference in priorities across income groups/political segments within society.
What I have written above describes the situation of two main segments. The first is especially the lower income group. The other is the productive segment that has emerged in the last few decades outside the traditionally known industrialist segment. Their nickname is the Anatolian tigers.
Now the question is, excluding some of the elites within the AKP, what are the main segments from which the AKP received tens of millions of votes? The low-educated and therefore low-skilled working class in the country are traditionally 'overwhelmingly' AKP voters. In the last 30 years, conservative pious people who came to the city from the villages, regained the right to study at university, and regained the right to work in the public sector were mostly Akp's vote depots. Retired people who lived through the aftermath of the coup (1980), but mostly the great catastrophe of the 1990s (1993-1999) and are now between the ages of 55-80 were also mostly Akp voters.
The country's intellectual and academic circles, cultural and artistic circles, as well as those who have already been earning money over money since the 90s are 'overwhelmingly' an extension of the opposition. Professional chambers, the media, trade/worker unions have been the areas where Akp has fought much more visibly, especially after 2013-14, purged many of them and tried to take control with the power of the state. And it has succeeded, especially in the media.
*
What we know is that in the country, especially the lower income group and the artisans and craftsmen above it, and to some extent the new generation of industrialists with limited financial resources, constitute the segments most affected by the economic crisis in the country. These segments are also Akp's main constituency in an income/status-based classification that is free of ideological motives.
So why do these people continue to vote for this party when this economic crisis, deepened by the AKP's flawed monetary policies, is hitting its own voters the hardest?
Look, even the polls conducted at the Chp headquarters still show Akp at 30%, and Akp has not even started its election campaign yet. Let me tell you something even more ironic: Most of these Akp's lost votes are not going to the opposition, they are mostly going to Mhp, the main supporter of the government that keeps it in power. Already today, many of the Akp elites of the 2003-2011 period are in the opposition ranks. Nevertheless, their parties are currently polling between 1% and 2%. This ideological transformation is being ignored, and this is the main issue I criticize the opposition for.
The popular political understanding in the opposition draws an analogy between 1999-2003 (that process actually started in 1993) and 2016-2023 and sees the same conditions as having occurred. This is a very logical explanation for the opposition and I think they have a lot of points. But this is not the case for the pro-government voters. Anyway, majority of post-2016 voters are not the Akp voters of 2003. There are more than 10 million people who would still vote for Erdoğan even if they had no bread to put on their table.
Some may insult these people by calling them sheep, idiots or any other adjectives. But you cannot weaken Erdoğan's power without trying to understand why these people have this attitude when they feel the problems in the country most closely. I have made the post too long, but I think I have given the main idea. I will continue to write about this topic when I have time.
