We don’t have a crisis, do we?

There were lots of plainclothes as well as uniformed police on Hükümet Avenue as the Tekirdağ Police Department had deployed some additional policemen in the area because of a planned visit to the Governor’s Office by State Minister Murat Başesgioğlu. Policemen intervened, broke the windows of the minibus, put out the fire and saved the man. His face, hair, hands and parts of his body were seriously burnt. "Was it worth putting yourself on fire?" asked the policemen to the 45-year-old man. "We don’t have a crisis, do we?" was his answer.

The 45-year-old man was a small merchant. Because of the "tangentially passing crisis" his business collapsed. He had debts to pay, needed money to finance health expenses of his 10-year-old son, Ahmet, who was undergoing medical treatment at a hospital because of leukemia. He sold his house, his car. Tried to finance hospital expenses, but the money in his hands could not suffice for the lengthy leukemia treatment. He needed more money. He applied to local officials, tried to get credit from banks, he was told to apply for a "green card." NoÉ It was not the work-permit green card the United States distributes every year to winners of a lottery. It was the green card the Turkish state has been issuing for poor people with which they receive free health services. But, the "social state" which has been distributing over the past many months millions of Turkish Liras worth of election alms in the form of coal, foodstuffs as well as mobile telephones and household appliances did not believe Uçar; he was denied a green card. The worst, his 10-year-old son lost the fight and passed away. "My son died yesterday. He was not given proper treatment because I did not have money any longer É He was buried yesterday," he cried. "We were social state, ha? When does a social state help its citizens? Where was that social state when my son was in need of that social state?"

Committing a suicidal act is not of course something a man with mental integrity can undertake. However, this "tangentially" passing crisis has apparently reached such a dimension that it started disrupting psychology of our people. On third pages of newspapers we have started reading every day stories of fathers killing their kids, wives and committing crime? Why? The story is almost all the same. The father is either unemployed or his small shop collapsed because of the stagnation in the market, debts accumulated and a feeling of "there is no way out from this mess" has developed.

Yesterday, new unemployment statistics were released. Accordingly, in the November 2008 period, unemployment in Turkey increased by 2.2 percentage points compared to the same period in 2007 and reached a record 12.3 percent level. Furthermore, if urban unemployment is taken separately from rural unemployment, the unemployment rate reaches 15.4 percent. According to statistical data, some 17.5 of the unemployed, that is 524,000 of the overall 2.995 million unemployed, have lost their jobs recently.

The actual situation is even worst

These statistics, unfortunately, don’t provide realistic up-to-date information about the Turkish economy. The situation is far more serious because we all know that both the number of businesses collapsed or scaled down their operations as well as the number of workers dismissed from work places, put on unpaid leave or asked to work reduced hours skyrocketed over the past few months.

Erdoğan declared that he would prefer to make a deal with the IMF before the March 29 local polls. If the 2007 overall budgetary allocation of the Tunceli province was 5 million liras, but just over the past four months 7 million liras worth of election alms were distributed in Tunceli by the state agencies, can we say the government is willing to engage in a new deal with the IMF, receive some cheap credits but agree as well to some austerity measures while the country is heading to local polls?Let’s wait for a deal (perhaps with even more difficult terms) with the IMF after the polls.