Turks are rooting for change

A diverse coalition, including ex-AKP renegades and secular nationalists as well as moderate Kurds and left-wing progressives, are putting their differences aside in Turkey to unite around the common cause of more democracy, a better economy, and a return to normalcy.

A key element of this shifting momentum is the rise of a new style of politics that articulates a positive vision for the country and gives primacy to reason over emotion, compromise over conflict, and unity over division.

Erdogan’s wrong policies reduced the country to an us-versus-them binary also glossed over leadership lapses and ineffective management in every area from the banks to the barracks.

For Turkish citizens, the prices keep rising. Inflation neared 20 percent in September. According to Turkey’s largest trade union, more than 7 million minimum wage earners face hunger. Polls show that almost two-thirds of the Turkish public is struggling to make ends meet and Turkey’s best and brightest are emigrating in droves.

While the Turkish lira continues to decline in an unprecedented way against the dollar and foreign currencies, the opposition parties blamed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for this, holding him responsible.

CHP Chairman and Leader of the Opposition, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, accused Erdogan, saying that he took the power granted to the Central Bank by Parliament, and gave it to someone else.

He added, in his party’s security speech that the Central Bank directly determines the monetary policy and the tools that it will apply to ensure price stability, noting that this authority took them by Decree No. 36, in reference to the Price Stability Committee that was formed last July.

Also, he said, “I know that the price hike is painful, I know that people cannot earn a living, veterans cannot earn a living, and relatives of martyrs cannot live on their pensions.”

Pervin Buldan, the co-chair of the HDP, sharply criticized Erdogan and his party. She said, “The head of the AKP (Erdogan) says he wrote a book on the economy, if you write a book on the economy, make a movie too, with your gang of five, your ministers who destroyed their ministry, your media, you can portray the sinking economy in a way. extremely good”.

In turn, Ali Babacan, head of the Democracy and Progress Party, indicated that the value of the minimum wage against the dollar had fallen to low levels.

“When we handed over the economy to you, the lira against the dollar was 2.92, in the past hour it exceeded 10 liras.”he added.

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s power weakens, the Turkish economy’s crisis deepens. Since the end of 2012, the Turkish lira has lost more than 80 percent of its value, the worst slide in the developing world after the Argentine peso.