Obviously the currency crises in the Turkey is nothing new. The relative stability brought by the government Erdogan in the years after 2005 seems to be a thing of the past, with the President of the neighbouring country unable to convince the markets and ultimately his own people that his economic policy can have anything but a catastrophic deadlock ahead of it.
The markets remain completely indifferent to Erdogan's eccentricities and the famous «economic war of independence» he has declared.
The continuous deterioration of the country's economic prospects brought with it another currency crisis, with the Turkish lira losing more and more of its value every day against other currencies, including of course the euro, breaking one historical low after another.
The Turkish lira and the collapse of the economy
Anyone who travels frequently will have noticed that suddenly in Turkey they are suddenly much richer with the exchange rate skyrocketing even compared to the previous week. Slowly, however, this collapse of the Turkish lira is starting to show up in the daily life of the average Turkish citizen.
The prices of products change from day to day and for various products reach 15% and 20% increase without, of course, a corresponding increase in wages.
More specifically, the Turkish lira reached an all-time low of 13.44 pounds per dollar on Tuesday, a figure that would have seemed unbelievable before and began to become somewhat more believable when it broke the psychological 11 Turkish pounds per dollar barrier last week.
The currency crisis has been underway since the beginning of 2018, thanks to a combination of geopolitical tensions with the West, giant debt and a the disastrous policy of the Turkish government in dealing with inflation.
10 things you can buy for just 5 euros
In order to better understand what is happening with prices in Turkey and how the value of the currency has collapsed, we have researched and found the average price differences of everyday products found in Turkey and made the necessary conversions to euros. So these are 10 things you can buy for just 5 euros.
- 8 simple cheeseburgers in well-known fast food chains (around £9 each)
- 13 litres of milk (a litre can for around 5,5 pounds)
- 4 single cappuccino in a café (average around 15 pounds each)
- 9 or even 10 litres of petrol (about £7.5 per litre)
- 3 packs of cigarettes (a pack of 20 cigarettes for around £18.5)
- 8 kg of oranges (sold at 8,5 pounds per kilo)
- 9,5 kg of tomatoes (sold at 6,3 pounds per kilo)
- 2 tickets for cinema screenings (£30 each)
- 1 bottle of mid-range wine (£67 each)
- 2 or 3 beers in a bar (20 to 25 pounds each)
Obviously, the above indicators alone are not sufficient. Turkey is a vast country and therefore the cost of living is different in the rich neighbourhoods of Istanbul, for example, compared to a village on the Syrian border. At the same time, both exchange rates with the euro and commodity prices are rising at a dizzying pace, making it very difficult to maintain a middle ground. In any case, however, it is quite indicative of what is happening in the economy of the neighbouring country.
The Turkish government bought some time when Devlet Bahceli, Erdogan's nationalist ally, backed him from the floor of the Turkish parliament on how to deal with the crisis so far. But public opinion has clearly turned against him and his image is expected to get even worse as the months go by. It is not unlikely that we are in the final months of his administration.
