Major supermarket chains have also started offering credit!

If you follow the television news and newspapers, you would think we closed the week with an incredibly intense agenda!

But the real agenda is neither the 'Mpox' danger announced by the World Health Organization, nor the forest fires that suddenly scorched our lungs, nor the brawl between members of parliament that started with Alpay Özalan attacking Ahmet Şık and subsequently turned into a battlefield...

The agenda is, once again, PRICE HIKES!

For instance, the price hikes on highways and bridges on the last day of the week shocked those planning to travel and those who use these bridges and tunnels every day to get to work.

With universities set to open very soon, dormitory fee hikes of up to 60 percent have deeply wounded families preparing to send their children to university...

And, of course, the fire in the markets and bazaars...

The cost of living has bent the public's back so much that even major supermarket chains have started offering credit!

You heard that right: 'Credit'

Once upon a time, the credit ledgers of neighborhood grocers were the lifeline for low-income citizens. However, as grocers, having lost their endurance against monopolizing chain markets, closed one by one, low-income citizens began to turn to credit cards. Now, even these credit cards are not enough. There is no citizen left without credit card debt.  

At this point, chain markets have also given up and started keeping credit ledgers!

With one difference, of course! 

This is not as innocent a ledger as the neighborhood grocer's. It is a credit service with interest, just like a bank...

The other day, a poster hanging in a small branch of A101, which we are accustomed to seeing in every neighborhood, caught my attention. 

Prepared with the slogan "Credit has started!", the poster read, "Buy now, pay 2 months later." 

The public is in such a struggle to make ends meet that supermarket chains have started inventing extra credit schemes just so people will shop...

These campaigns are a clear example of how citizens are struggling even when buying basic food items.

I have been in Bodrum for a while. I have the opportunity to talk to Bodrum tradespeople. Tradespeople talk about how business is bad and that the crowds walking the streets are just aimless crowds who are not shopping. 

Many say they might just scrape by this season and close their shutters next year. 

In other words, the public's real agenda is to feed themselves. Nobody cares about those pouring cola on the streets or the members of parliament punching each other in the assembly...