A ring of sucuk costs 400 liras

I arrived in Istanbul the day before yesterday for a short one-week trip. The morning after I arrived, I went out to the market to do some grocery shopping for breakfast.

My dreams were filled with the image of a nice breakfast featuring sucuk with eggs and the crusty bread I had been missing.

However, my dreams quickly turned into a nightmare. When I paid 400 liras for a single ring of sucuk, I once again faced the burning reality of the marketplace. A ring of sucuk is 400 liras, 200 grams of black olives is 125 liras, two loaves of bread are 20 liras...

I paid 545 liras for one breakfast.

My cousin, who came to the market with me, saw my eyes popping out of my head every time I heard a price and said, "Don't be surprised; we have learned not to be surprised by brand new price hikes every day." In fact, there are no price tags on almost any of the products. When I asked the seller why this was the case, he said, "Brother, I'm tired of changing tags every day; I can't get any work done. A shopkeeper has to hire someone just for this. It's a full-time job in itself."

A breakfast costs over 500 liras; if we divide that by the minimum wage, you can buy enough for about 30 breakfasts. In other words, even if you only buy breakfast items, the minimum wage is gone in a month. That doesn't even include lunch or dinner.

Everywhere I step, even just saying hello starts at 500 liras. I understood why because whoever was with me at that moment reacted by saying, "Get used to it, it's normal." The zeros dropped from the currency in 2005 have returned. 500 liras actually has the purchasing power of 50 liras...

The interesting part is this: the same ring of sucuk sold for 400 liras is sold for 6.6 pounds in the UK. However, when you buy the same sucuk in Turkey, you pay about 10 pounds. Moreover, this product has logistics costs. It is sold for 6.5 pounds including overseas shipping, customs, wholesaler margins, and the market's profit. Yet, when the same product is produced in Turkey, it is 10 pounds.

It is impossible to make sense of this. The economy is bad, but when opportunism is added on top of it, the poor struggle even to access basic food items.

While facing all of this, I came across the news of the day: The "Income Inequality and Poverty Report-5," prepared by the Labor Research (EMAR) department of the DİSK-affiliated Genel-İş union, was published. And according to this report, "While 190 thousand more people became impoverished in Turkey in the last year, the poverty rate reached 21.7 percent."

The report emphasizes that 15 percent of workers in Turkey are poor. Furthermore, the persistent poverty rate, which refers to those living below the poverty line for at least three of the last four years, has increased by 1.7 percent to 14 percent.

According to TUIK data, the number of poor people, which was 18 million 30 thousand in 2022, rose to 18 million 219 thousand in 2023; the poverty rate reached 21.7 percent.

But unfortunately, the top agenda item of my country, which is becoming increasingly impoverished, was the detention of astrologer Meral Güven, who had previously made headlines with the words "Fenerbahçe will miraculously become the champion" and against whom an investigation was launched due to live broadcasts she made on her social media accounts after Galatasaray became champion by defeating Konyaspor 3-1.

What can I say, let my fortune be whatever it may be...