Turks Grapple with Economic Hardships: Erdogan's Policies Under Scrutiny

Many Turks feel anxious and ashamed about their eroding living standards, paying the price for President Tayyip Erdogan's past economic missteps even as signs emerge that the country is beginning to exit its cost-of-living crisis.

Six years of punishing inflation, combined with a sharp clampdown on credit over the last year, have plunged retirees and salaried workers into poverty, data shows, testing Turkey's social fabric as never before during Erdogan's two-decade rule. Turks are now slipping cash to retired parents and grandparents, reversing traditional customs, while struggling to pay monthly bills and forgoing modest luxuries like restaurants.

Erdogan has urged patience, but 2024 is shaping up to be the most challenging year in a generation for Turks, whose economic fortunes have rapidly deteriorated since the first of a series of currency crashes in 2018. "I may still be walking, but I am not really living," said 73-year-old Fettah Deniz, whose monthly pension is three times below the poverty line, so his children help him out.

(With inputs from agencies.)