Page 19 - bne_newspaper_April_19_2019

Opinion
April 19, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 19
ISTANBUL BLOG:
Erdogan’s loyalists resort to shooting the messenger
Akin Nazli in Belgrade
You can tell things have gotten truly bad in Turkey because the authoritarians-that-be, or more to the point their loyalist press lapdogs, have started shooting the messenger (the foreign media).
Well, following last year’s currency crisis, the newly appointed finance minister Berat Albayrak — who just happens to be President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law — can’t say he didn’t
enjoy generous praise for his “rebalancing” programme. He somewhat settled the markets last September with some reassuring tete-a- tetes with financiers in London and brought home the goods — the essential hot money funding the Erdogan administration needs to keep its Turkey show on the road — but lo and behold, on just a single day — on March 22 to
be precise as the run-up to the March 31 local elections grew intense — global capital recalled that the country’s economy stands on feet of clay (as if it hadn’t been damn well obvious all along) and everything started to unravel.
Should one of the said messengers actually be
a true Turkish patriot, they might, if offered the requisite wizardry blow their brains out to make the building financial torment — and yes, folk are miserable, look how they rebelled in the municipal polls — disappear in a burst of smoke, but alas that option is not available to them because while Turkey’s problems are all too real, Gandalf’s apparently got lost in Fangorn forest.
Berat Albayrak, finance minister, Turkey
None-too-rave reviews
Albayrak, as we know from the none-too-rave reviews, is currently in Washington to convince the banks too big to fail to again let the hot money flow, as he aims to avoid an IMF bailout (not that it is even possible to visualise Erdogan, who’s puffed himself up numerous times during his last 10 years at the top declaiming that Turkey no longer has any need for the institution, ever agreeing to such a programme). But each day brings more grim macro news. Each data release shows that the country’s real economy is crumbling.
Turkey’s official unemployment rate grew again in January, moving up to 14.7%, the highest level seen since March 2009, from 13.5% in December, statistical institute TUIK said on April 15. That 10-year-high includes a youth unemployment rate that has hit a record high of 26.7%, growing more than 2 percentage points from 24.5% in December. TUIK has provided youth unemployment figures since 2005.
It should be noted — yes, it really should — that these figures are relatively mild compared to the actual situation out there, thanks to TUIK’s suspect methodology for calculating what constitutes joblessness.
While Turkey’s population aged over 15 is growing — it reaching 61.02mn in January from 60.95mn the month before — the country’s workforce is