Living in Istanbul is an act of resistance...

Doesn't the title of this article sound like a line from a Nazım Hikmet poem? “Living in Istanbul is an act of resistance”… I wish it were a quote from a poem. I wish the idea that living is a material and spiritual resistance were just a fairy tale that only existed in songs and poems. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The material side of things is a painful reality.

Recently, Istanbul Planning Agency (IPA) President Buğra Gökçe shared some very important data regarding the cost of living in Istanbul. According to the IPA's “Cost of Living in Istanbul - May 2024” report, the average cost of living for a family of four in Istanbul has reached 61,523 TL. Now, you might ask, how can retirees receiving a 10,000 TL pension or people earning the 17,000 TL minimum wage support their families in Istanbul?

We can understand the striking answers to this question through the data provided by IPA President Buğra Gökçe. The rate of retirees who continue to work officially in Istanbul is 28.4%. In other words, one out of every three retirees living in Istanbul is working. Among those covered by the EYT (Retirement Age) regulation, the employment rate in Istanbul is 52.2%. This rate is four points above the Turkey average. So, it doesn't seem very possible to be happy about retiring and just sit at home. Life, with all its burdens, is on the shoulders of retirees...

While this is the situation for retirees, what about minimum wage earners? According to the IPA report, the average monthly cost of living for a family of four in Istanbul is 61,000 TL, while according to TÜRK-İŞ's April 2024 data, the monthly expenditure for food, clothing, housing, transportation, education, health, and similar needs for a family of four at the poverty line is 57,736 TL (in Ankara)... In this case, it seems very difficult for even two minimum wages entering a household to support a family. Furthermore, when looking at the increase in expense items, families with children who are still in school have a very difficult time. Look, according to the May data announced by TUIK, inflation recorded a monthly increase of 3.37 percent. Annual inflation rose to 75.45 percent. The top three items with the highest increases are clothing and footwear, housing, and education. These three items appear to be the expenditure group that affects families with children the most. When we add Istanbul's urban inflation on top of these TUIK figures, the situation becomes inextricable. Being a mother or father is no longer just about the responsibility of raising good children; it is also the art of pulling a rabbit out of a hat, creating something out of nothing in a thousand ways, and finding a way out through miracles...

While retirees and minimum wage earners are trying to maintain their lives at the poverty line, let's see how the white-collar workers are doing.

Let's say you are a professor at a state university and your salary is approximately 70,000 TL per month, maybe reaching 90,000-100,000 TL with extra course income, or you are a doctor with a salary of approximately 100,000-120,000 TL, and you live in Istanbul. We can estimate similar salary scales for engineers and other professional groups. With rental costs in Istanbul, along with expenses like clothing and children's schooling, white-collar workers are now very far from their former glory days. In our youth (which corresponds roughly to the nineties), children of white-collar parents could easily study in private middle schools and high schools, and even in foundation universities like Bilkent or Yeditepe, although there were very few of them at the time. Now, the situation is not that comfortable. When we look at the annual school fees for new registrations at private schools for the 2024-2025 academic year, we encounter figures approaching 1 million TL. Üsküdar American Academy new registration is 975,000 TL, Istanbul Private Saint Joseph High School is 982,000 TL, Notre Dame de Sion French High School is 953,000 TL, Private German High School is 905,000 TL... Considering that payments are generally made in 10 installments, monthly installment payments, including meals and service, seem to reach the 70,000-100,000 TL range for one child. Excluding private lessons, courses, and clothing... Life is now very difficult for all income groups... While our generation had at least two, three, or even four siblings, and all these children could easily receive an education and somehow build a home, now people are stopping at one child. Guess why?! Because there is nothing left of the equality of opportunity that the Republic offered us.

The Republic is fundamentally about equality of opportunity. Our Republican history is full of life stories of political leaders and successful business people who came from a remote village in Anatolia, came to study at Istanbul High School, Kabataş High School, and many other Anatolian and Science High Schools, and subsequently studied engineering at the Technical University or METU, and were able to reach the highest levels in the state. A close friend's father was able to put his son through mechanical engineering at METU in Ankara by working as a lathe operator in İzmir, and with the education he received, he became one of the top executives in Turkey's energy sector today. This was the Republic!

Looking at the difficulty of living in Istanbul, it is now very difficult for a worker's child to study as a boarding student on a scholarship, or for a teacher's child to study at a private school. We are children of the years when the income gap between classes was small and equality of opportunity was high. The generations before us benefited from equality of opportunity much more. Now, there is a deep chasm between income groups.

Sending a child from a village in Anatolia to Istanbul for high school is turning into a dream when you consider the travel, food, clothing, and pocket money. We have lost many of our values during the AK Party era, but most importantly, we have lost equality of opportunity. This is my greatest sorrow. Ultimately, in the time period we are in, life in Istanbul and many other cities has turned into an act of resistance.

Still, we must not forget that those who resist will win. A little more patience. Patience until we reclaim all the values we have lost and build an equal life...