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The “total war” that the president Turkish Erdogan said inflation is having a protagonist of exception: the onion. A few weeks after the announcement of the higher rate of inflation in fifteen years, the discovery of 30 tonnes of this vegetable in a warehouse in the southeast of the country has served the Government to warn against those who cause an artificial inflation retaining property; and to critics for accusing the executive of using the case of onions, a head of steam, while they fail to curb inflation.
in a year In which Turkey has lived through presidential elections, and with campaigning for the municipal preheating, the question of the price of basic foods has spent months in the centre of the political debate. “At the beginning of the year I was worth a lira and a half. Now I am worth a five-lire – 84 cents. What do we do? Do not act? Do not intervene in the taste of the dishes? Ah! What will be the menemem without onions?!”, complaint an onion moody, in an animation published by the opposition party, the CHP Monday.
If the onion is crucial in Turkish delight as the menemem, a traditional breakfast, they are not less lentils or potatoes, whose price has also gone up. Annual inflation reached 25% in October, a dimension that Turkey had barely known since the arrival of Recep Tayyip Erdogan to power in the aftermath of the crisis of Turkish in 2001. All in all, the economist Alaatin Aktas has pointed out that the increase of the price of the pantry only represents the 0,221% of the final data of inflation.
Despite this, the Turkish press, mostly related to the President, announced to fanfare in the police operation carried out in a warehouse of the south-eastern city of Mardin, last Thursday. The agents found 30 tons of sacks of onions, to the couple that the authorities announced legal action against the owner of the installation. That action caused the hilarity on the social networks. “We freedom to the onions!”, tweeted jocular a user. “Wanted”, read a poster shared on the photo of a lily.
The reason for such a disparity of reactions is that, with the data in hand, the critics of the Government and some economists are skeptical with the results of the struggle against inflation adopted by Ankara. Especially since Erdogan, who advocates for more control over the economy, declines to raise interest rates to confront inflation, as the recipe of the economic orthodoxy. The Central Bank expects inflation to be set at the end of the year was 23.5%.
opponents of The executive alert, at the end of the day, that the Turkish administration is focusing on the problem of inflation in issues which are frivolous, such as onions, obviating other more effective measures. “We will not allow the storage,” warned a few weeks ago the minister of Treasury and Finance, and eventually son-in-law of Erdogan, and Berat Albayrak. The patriarch was more blunt: “No one has the right to sell expensive products to my citizens,” she said, and asked to denounce the traders that do.
According to the opposition leader, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the Ministry of the Interior has issued a circular urging the delegates of the Government to inspect any increase in “unfair” prices. Last month, Albayrak had announced a campaign to encourage the private companies will lower at least a ten percent the price of its products. Companies such as Turkcell, the largest operator of telephony Turkish, gave away packets of data. Kiliçdaroglu, therefore, considers that the measures are not yielding fruit.
But the Government will not be consumed in your plan, and you have to favor the index of consumer confidence. The Turkish newspaper Hürriyet announced on 22 November last year a rise of 57.3 to 59.6 points. “Although Turkey faced a tremendous serious operation against its currency, interest rates and inflation in August, we have succeeded in defeating these attacks are economic in just two months,” was held Berat Albayrak two weeks ago. Time will tell if this argument is not just eclipsed by an onion.
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