(Bloomberg) — The anger sweeping along highways linking the humble hometown of Turkey’s leader and his plush lodgings in Ankara’s presidential palace is flashing a code red warning for Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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Tea growers, fishermen, small retailers, café staff and gas-station attendants — some of the typically low-paid, laboring Turks who have formed the backbone of Erdogan’s support over his two decades atop Turkish politics — are giving up on the ruling party as the cost of living surges.
An 800-kilometer (500-mile) journey this month along Turkey’s Black Sea coast and into its conservative hinterland showed how many are losing faith. Opposition parties control the major cities, meaning Erdogan and his AK Party must hold traditional bastions to stay in power at 2023 elections.
They have 18 months to win round disillusioned and wavering voters like Sahap Kardesler.
Emerging from a butcher shop in Iyidere, the 66-year-old pensioner had used credit to buy enough meat for several months. “I might not be able to afford it later,” he explained. “It’s not even clear what the price will be in an hour.”
His popularity waning amid pandemic-induced hardship, Erdogan has forced Turkey into a high-risk economic experiment. He’s leaned on the central bank to slash the cost of borrowing in search of the sunlit uplands of greater investment and better jobs, and lashed out at the power wielded by global finance.
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It’s his version of the path to export-driven riches followed in the past by some nations in Asia. Yet for now, the president’s divergence from orthodox economics is leaving people poorer — wiping more than 50% from the value of the lira currency this year and sending prices spiraling.
Serving tea at his small Iyidere café, Selahattin Mete draws on his business acumen to accuse the president of being naive.
“You can’t say ‘I don’t accept interest rates’ when your economy is deeply connected to the rest of the world,” he said. Still loyal to Erdogan, Mete, 51, has had enough of the president’s Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party, or AKP.
“They’re looking down at us,” he said. “At the beginning, they were one of us, ordinary people. Now they’re living in luxury.”
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That’s a complaint you hear regularly in what are supposed to be AKP strongholds.
Iyidere is in Rize province, home to Erdogan’s father until he left to work in Istanbul and where the president spent some of his childhood.
That personal …….
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/turkey-erdogan-losing-support-where-111308436.html
