The collapse of a country does not happen sometimes with a tank, sometimes with a coup, sometimes with a war.
Sometimes with a grocery receipt.
This is exactly what is happening in Turkey today.
A quiet, slow but systematic impoverishment operation.
The comparison made by British journalist Lizzie Porter was in fact an international confirmation of the humiliation that millions of people experience every day at the checkout.
The basic grocery basket in Istanbul is more expensive than in London.
In the past, if this sentence had been an opposition slogan, the ruling media would have broadcast it for days as “an operation to discredit Turkey”.
Now the numbers directly shout the truth:
In Turkey, people live at world prices but try to survive on third world salaries.
Even more striking is this:
This is no longer a temporary crisis.
This is the economic character of the new regime.
Because inflation in Turkey is no longer just the result of economic failure; it has become the main tool of the governance model.
Thanks to high inflation, wages are eroding, savings are eroding, the middle class is eroding, the power of appeal is eroding.
A society's resistance reflex is broken by hunger.
This is what is happening today.
In the past, you used to buy a house with your pension.
Now you cannot fill a grocery cart with a pension.
The minimum wage used to be called “below the subsistence line”.
Now it is even below the hunger line.
But the same sentences are still on the screens:
“The economy is growing.”
“Exports are breaking records.”
“Turkey is on the rise.”
So who is rising?
Citizens who shop at the checkout with less and less product?
A store employee who can't keep up with his staff due to changing labels?
The officer who looks at the credit card limit after the 15th?
No, no, no.
The Falcons;
those who transfer wealth from high inflation,
those who thrive in the triangle of interest-euro-ruble-tender,
those who take advantage of the crisis.
Because in this system, inflation is not a malfunction; it is the mechanism that moves income distribution upwards.
Let us be very clear:
Today, market prices in Turkey are not just economic data.
These prices are also an X-ray of political morality.
If meat is a luxury in a country,
coffee becomes inaccessible,
if child nutrition is collapsing the family budget,
there, not only the economy but also the state mind is bankrupt.
And you know what the most tragic part is?
In this country, people are no longer subjected to poverty, but to the normalization of poverty.
This is what they keep telling people:
“Life is expensive in Europe too.”
Yes, but in Europe people live on their salaries.
People in Turkey breathe with credit cards.
INFLATION IS NOT AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM, BUT A FORM OF GOVERNANCE OF THE NEW REGIME
Turkey no longer talks about inflation.
We live in inflation.
Waking up in the morning with a raise,
changing the label at noon,
We have become a society whose evening salary is melting.
And this has become so commonplace that people are no longer surprised by the price; they just give up.
Here is the regime's greatest success:
To get society used to it while slowly impoverishing it.
Because societies in constant crisis stop reacting after a while.
First he gives up meat,
then vacation,
then from the car,
and then I stopped dreaming...
Most people in Turkey today no longer want to “live well”.
He just wants to see the end of the month.
This psychological collapse is more severe than the economic picture.
Pay attention:
Governments used to try to reduce inflation.
Today, inflation is managed.
In other words, it is not being resolved; it is being maintained in a controlled manner.
Why?
Because high inflation allows governments to collect invisible taxes.
You get a salary increase, but the market doubles it.
You think you are receiving a salary, but in fact your purchasing power has been quietly transferred.
This is the most sophisticated wealth transfer model of the modern era.
In Turkey, citizens are no longer just working; they are also forced to carry their money, which is constantly losing value.
Savers are penalized.
Those on fixed incomes are being crushed.
Those who manipulate win, not those who produce.
What's more frightening is this:
This economic decay is now feeding moral decay.
Because when people don't get along, the character of society changes.
Debt normalizes.
Opportunism becomes normalized.
Tax evasion is considered “vigilantism”.
Torpil becomes a “necessity”.
Luxury becomes a sign of success.
As the economic crisis prolongs in a country, not only money loses value, but also conscience.
And this is where the discourse of power comes into play:
“Foreign powers.”
“Global crisis.”
“War environment.”
“The interest lobby.”
But the reality is much simpler:
In Turkey, the economy is no longer governed by science, but by propaganda.
The Central Bank announces targets, the market does not believe it.
The minister talks, the citizen looks at the market price.
Official inflation is announced, but people know the real rate in their own kitchens.
Because the data in the citizen's pocket cannot be manipulated.
People believe the market, not TurkStat.
He does not look at the economic management; he looks at the receipt in the cash register.
And that receipt is no longer an economic document,
It is the bill of life that the government has imposed on the people.
Never before has society been so intensively turned into a “cheap labor depot”.
Young people want to flee the country.
The doctor is leaving.
The engineer is leaving.
The software developer is leaving.
Because people now see that they are losing not only their salaries but also their future.
The government is still asking for patience.
But patience is required in times of temporary hardship.
Twenty years of governance crisis can no longer be called a “policy of patience”.
This is a direct inability to govern.
And the economic situation in Turkey today is not the result of wrong policies, but of long-term political arrogance.
IT IS NOT THE TURKISH LIRA THAT HAS BEEN CHEAPENED, BUT HUMAN LIFE
A country does not collapse just because its currency depreciates.
It collapses when human life is cheapened.
This is exactly what is happening in Turkey today.
It is no longer just about market prices.
It is about the devaluation of a society's labor.
Devaluation of the diploma.
Devaluation of the sweat of the brow.
Even living honestly is economically penalized.
Because today in this system;
not the producer but the link,
not working but close to the system,
manipulation has been favored, not saving.
That is why people in Turkey are not only becoming poorer; they are also losing their sense of justice.
Let us be very clear:
No society can be sustained by constant humiliation.
Every day you get a raise,
calculating your child's lunchbox,
living in fear of the landlord,
You cannot keep telling millions of people who are choosing between pensions and medicine to “be patient”.
Because at some point hunger ceases to be an economic issue; it turns into a crisis of political legitimacy.
The biggest problem of the government in Turkey today is not inflation; it is loss of confidence.
People don't believe the figures anymore.
He does not believe in the stated goals.
He doesn't believe in the fairy tale that it will be better tomorrow.
Because citizens see this:
Austerity is always called for by the people,
but privileged groups never sit at the sacrifice table.
That is why there is so much anger in society.
So what is the solution?
The solution is not just to raise interest rates.
Not just an interim pay raise.
Because Turkey's crisis is no longer technical; it is structural and moral.
First of all, the state needs to manage the economy with reality, not propaganda.
Without ending the crisis of confidence in the TurkStat,
Before the Central Bank becomes fully independent,
without a predictable legal system,
nobody invests for the long term.
Hot money comes to a country but confidence does not.
Second, Turkey needs to return to a production economy.
The era of growth with concrete is over.
Prosperity cannot be produced through a tender economy.
With short-term exchange rate pressure, people may vote for a few months, but the country cannot develop.
Before agriculture is declared a strategic sector again,
without protecting the farmer,
without food planning,
Market prices will never fall in Turkey.
The reason why we eat more expensive meat than the UK today is not just inflation; it is the collapse of production.
The third and most critical issue:
Income distribution in Turkey needs to be reorganized.
While the wealth of a handful of people multiplies,
A system in which millions live on credit cards cannot be called an “economic success”.
Without changing the tax system,
without reducing indirect taxes,
This crisis will not end until the model that puts the burden on wage earners instead of luxury consumption is abandoned.
Today, the salaried worker does not just get by;
but also bears the entire burden of the system.
And perhaps most importantly:
Turkey needs to return to the idea of merit.
Because if institutions in a country are not managed with competence, not loyalty,
inflation is not only in prices,
It also starts in the memory of the state.
The crisis we see on supermarket shelves today is actually the result of years of institutional collapse.
The last word is this:
Turkey is no longer a cheap country.
It has become a country whose people have been cheapened.
And no power,
and condemn its own citizens to world prices,
cannot survive indefinitely by settling for local wages.
Because when a society runs out of patience,
is not the first economy to collapse,
it becomes an established political story.