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Opinion
August 17, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 29
ernment cast a wide net in its scramble for cash. An entirely new kind of tax—an excise duty for broadly-defined luxuries ranging from jewellery to mobile phone calls—affected just about everyone.
Turkish citizens flying out of Istanbul were slapped with an exit fee that was set at $50 but collected in the capricious lira, making overseas travel even more expensive.
An annual duty on foreign-owned vehicles was multiplied so many times over that it was cheaper for my British father to hand the keys of his age- ing Peugeot 405 over to the state: the tax was worth more than the car.
Meanwhile we were forced to renegotiate the rent on the family home, which was set in pound ster- ling and had become simply unaffordable.
And my international school—the kind of place where Ankara’s business elite, serving diplomats and less affluent but lucky parents like mine sent their children—ended its policy of paying staff exclu- sively in US dollars. The best foreign-born teachers simply chose to leave and the school suffered for it.
That crisis 17 years ago was cruel to my family, but my parents kept their jobs and we always had the ultimate fall-back of returning to the UK.
Most Turkish families did not have such safety nets. Jobs were lost and livelihoods destroyed, triggering the well-documented process that led to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Foolish whispers
Many believe that this year, as the lira plummets once again, history could repeat itself. Economic strife begets political upheaval, so the narrative goes, and some are even whispering, foolishly, that this could quickly spell the end of Erdogan’s presidency.
But there is no-one in Turkey who better un- derstands the political lessons of 2001 than the president himself—and there lies the reason behind his response.
That is why the country has been put on a war footing to wage what is described as an “eco- nomic conflict”. There is an enemy out there and it is to be found in banks, big companies and foreign leaders. The nation must unite to fight it.
Turkish nationalism runs so deep that even Erdogan’s detractors, people who never contemplate voting for him, will readily accept the narrative that ill-defined outside forces are hell-bent on Turkey’s destruction.
Even opposition parties subscribe to it. They don’t have much of a choice. Any interpretation that is mildly sympathetic to foreigners carries the risk of being seen as treasonous.
The question is how long this interpretation will hold sway.
One reason I associate the 2001 crisis with my school is because of that English literature class we filed into after tracking the lira’s decline. The teacher was that rare example of a foreign national who had come to understand how Turkey ticks.
“I know you’re all worried about the dollar, but let me tell you that I have lived in Turkey for 25 years and I have seen three major economic crises,” she told us, counting them off on her fingers.
“It will be painful again, it always is, but the country always finds a way of picking itself up and carrying on.”
In 2001, the upheaval was caused not so much by the initial shock as the torturous slog that followed: sav- ings rendered worthless, university graduates trapped in unskilled jobs, doctors’ prescriptions utterly unaf- fordable. That sense of lost dignity took many months to grow and manifested as anger at the political class.
It could happen again. The ingredients are fright- eningly similar. But the storytellers are vastly dif- ferent this time and there is nothing at this stage to suggest political upheaval in Turkey.
But of course, on 22 February 2001, no-one would have predicted the AKP either.