Page 11 - TURKRptJun21

I.
2.4 Polls and sociology
Germany reported a sharp rise in undeclared gold coming from Turkey.
A scandal broke over the AKP officials’ “grey passport” smuggling of Turks to Europe. “I was hungry, yes? Look, imagine, I eat meat here every day. I was not able to eat meat there [in Turkey],” one man, who got to Germany via the grey passport scheme, told Haberturk on April 19.
Some of Turkey's biggest banks are reportedly reluctant to finance President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's planned $11-13bn Kanal Istanbul.
Odile Renaud-Basso, the new head of the EBRD, held a video call with Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
Turkey’s competition board launched separate probes against cement makers and online retailers.
Turkish police instructed officers to stop people filming or recording on-duty security forces on smartphones.
Two Turkish young people, both 23, were detained and accused of “openly insulting the Turkish state’s sovereign insignia” after posting a satirical TikTok video titled “How to make use of a Turkish passport”. Citizens carrying a Turkish passport have few options for visa-free travel and face problems in obtaining visas.
Receiving a travel ban for voicing the uselessness of the Turkish passport can be seen for the irony it is, but the sentiment among young Turkish people is that they generally have no chance of travelling abroad not only because of the weak passport rating, but also because of the trashed Turkish lira, rife unemployment, the pandemic and the acutely inadequate coronavirus vaccination programme in the country.
Another common feeling among the young is that when you are in Turkey, there’s fun to be had—as long as you are not a citizen of it. Tourists in Turkey are not subject to any pandemic restrictions.
On May 1, a Turkish citizen who went for a swim with some Ukrainian tourists in the town of Datca on the Aegean coast was fined by police. A video shows police officers trying to explain why, but the man cannot fathom why he is the only person being fined out of five people who were swimming in the same place.
The probability might remain low but “the next stop for crop-ravaging desert locusts that lately crossed from Saudi Arabia to Iraq and then to Syria with southern winds could be Turkey.”
Spreading “sea snot” is blanketing Turkey’s Sea of Marmara.
Turkey has the lowest car ownership per capita ratio of 152 in Europe. Turks buy cars as a store of wealth to protect their savings from currency depreciation. The average age of carpark increased from 12.8 in 2019 to 13.2 in 2020.
On May 16, the combined daily transaction volumes on Turkish crypto exchanges rose to $2.5bn from below $2bn on April 23. The figure stood at $1.38bn as of March 24.
11 TURKEY Country Report June 2021 www.intellinews.com