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 bne February 2021 Southeast Europe I 51
 four-fifths of those between the ages of 18 and 27 say they don’t support the ruling coalition. That’s up from 76% in 2018 and 70% in 2015, Gezici said. The age group accounts for 16% of the electorate.
“The jobless ones are now defined as ‘home-youth’,” Gezici was further quoted as saying. “They are deeply frustrated as they’re unable to have their voices heard due to pressure and censorship.”
The Erdogan administration was hoping for a V-shaped rebound as the coronavirus crisis eased, but the crisis appears to have redoubled in Turkey in recent months, forcing the authorities to reintroduce weekend and night-time lockdowns.
Drive for growth braked
The drive for growth, meanwhile, has been braked by Erdogan bowing to market pressure for elevated interest rates to offer some protection to the crisis-stricken Turkish lira and usher in a period in which the central bank can attempt to rebuild FX reserves devastated by a failed effort at protecting the currency.
Turkey’s next parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled for 2023, but opposition parties, sensing the vulnerability of the Erdogan government in an increasingly crisis-infused atmosphere, are pushing to have them sooner.
The job retention programmes, including the ban on dismissals, have braked the build-up of official unemployment in the formal sector, with the rate edging down in August to October from the previous period to 12.7%, data released by the official statistics office TUIK on December 10 show. But the overall size of the workforce contracted 3.9% from
a year ago, and with companies going bankrupt left, right and centre amid the global health emergency, analysts pay little regard to this headline figure.
In October, Turkish labour union DISK noted that while official unemployment in the three months to August stood at 4.23mn, the real figure, when including people covered by the layoff ban and those placed on short weeks, was 9.8mn in a country of 83mn.
Arrera Automobili aims to launch Albania’s first supercar
bne IntelliNews
Arrera Automobili, owned by Albanian car designer Qendrim Thaqi, plans to put the 840-hp supercar dubbed Illyrian Pure Sport into production, the company announced on December 31. Illyrian Pure Sport is intended to be the first Albanian supercar.
“Pure Sport is designed by the same designer who designed the Porsche 9RE fan rendering, Qendrim Thaqi. Now, through his company Arrera Automobili, Thaqi wants to make the Pure Sport the first Albanian Supercar,” Arrera Automobili said in a Facebook post.
28-year-old Thaqi was born in Kosovo and now lives in Germany. He has worked on rendering before, and designed his idea for a successor to the Porsche 918 Spyder in the past.
In an interview with the automotive portal Motor1, Thaqi revealed that he has already assembled a team of engineers and body designers.
The new supercar Illyrian Pure Sport will be powered by a 6.2-litre twin- turbocharged LT2 V8, with 840 horsepower going to all four wheels via an eight-speed Tremec dual-clutch automatic transmission, the company said.
The top speed is expected to reach 375 kilometres per hour, and acceleration is expected to last only 2.7 seconds to reach 100 kilometres per hour.
Arrera Automobili follows another startup from the region, Croatia’s Rimac Automobile, a manufacturer of electric hypercars that has attracted the attention of luxury sports car producers that are looking to adapt to the industry’s electric future.
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