Page 51 - bne magazine February 2022_20220208

bne February 2022 OUTLOOK 2022 I 51
TURKEY
Turkey. Country of action. The Turkey watcher knows they can hardly take their eye off the place for a split second. And in 2022, such sentiments might apply more than ever. Mired in unprecedented Turkish lira volatility, the nation has entered another phase of escalation in its ongoing collapse in all fields.
It’s well known by now that chaos has beset Turkey’s economy, but how many outside of the country can prop- erly see the chaos that has crept into almost any sphere you can name, from foreign policy to the health system, education system, food security and so on, and on?
The prevailing consensus right now suggests that Turkey is embroiled in a financial and economic crisis, just as it was in August 2018. But this publication is sticking to its contention that the beginnings of the country’s full-blown collapse on all fronts – part of which can be accurately described as a financial and economic depression –
can actually be found in the aftermath of the failed
coup attempt in July 2016. There has been a nonstop worsening of Turkey’s plight ever since those fraught days when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that he had survived an armed conspiracy to topple him and, emboldened, set about becoming all-powerful.
The last time Turkey saw the type of food and basic goods shortages that are in evidence today was at the end of the 1970s. It was a time when many people died in clashes between the right and left. The PKK, a Kurdish terrorist organisation, arose on that fertile ground. The chaos paved the way for the 1980 military coup.
Turkey rarely enjoys a “bloodless” year, but 2022 has to be marked out as a candidate that will claim an unmis- takably tragic page in history when it comes to violence.
The only hope for the country is that the Erdogan administration will chance its arm in a snap poll. Ever since the regime lost the Istanbul mayoral election, plus a rerun, in 2019, we have, rather than posing
the question of whether Erdogan will lose the next parliamentary and presidential elections, pondered whether any election will be held.
The election does not need to be “fair”. Erdogan will lose any election.
In this most positive case, Turkish assets, led by the lira, would see a sharp rally. It would begin as soon as the market became convinced that Erdogan would have to hand over the reins of power. Turkey would then fall into
another “hot money trap”, as all “semi-colonies” do. An actual recovery, which could be described as at least returning to the 2015 settings, would require, at a minimum, five years of uninterrupted healing, with the programme to cover each and every corner of life.
It should be noted that, in the post-Erdogan period, any government, democratic or undemocratic, would have to politically and economically surrender to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme. And past experience with IMF programmes shows that political ructions would be in store.
Turkey still has access to borrowing on the global mar- kets – though each instance of borrowing at the required high costs brings the country closer to the ultimate end, namely the IMF programme.
A new version of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), working with the IMF, is the likeliest potential major political change you might see on the road ahead.
In the most rosy scenario, the opposition would benefit from the turbulence caused by the IMF’s impositions. There would be a shake-up period and a powerful government, which could apply the IMF programme, would take over at the wheel.
The IMF, of course, is far from a font of all wisdom. Among the demands the Fund made with its last stand- by programme for Turkey, signed in 2001, was a limiting of sugar beet production. Starch-based sugar consump- tion subsequently boomed. Currently, there are more than 10mn diabetic patients in the country.
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu could be a good candidate for implementing an IMF programme. He is flexible and populist. Deva Party chair Ali Babacan, a former Erdogan ally who was among those who implemented the 2001 programme, anticipates a place at the top table for himself.
The scenario could in a certain sense be seen as identical to what was seen in 2002. Back then, the serving Istanbul mayor Erdogan, was under pressure from the laicist military “tutelage” regime. In the present-day situation, he would be replaced by Istanbul mayor Imamoglu, who is under pressure from Erdogan’s Islamofascist regime. “Moderate Islam” would be replaced by “moderate secularism”.
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