OECD's proposal for Turkey draws reaction from Mahfi Eğilmez: An attempt to load the bill onto the backs of workers
The OECD's comments on Turkey's economic outlook and management moves have drawn a reaction from former Treasury Undersecretary and academic Dr. Mahfi Eğilmez. Eğilmez argued that the structural reforms proposed by the OECD are, in fact, of a nature that would weaken workers' rights and load the burden of the system onto the laborers.
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The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) had evaluated Turkey's current economic outlook and the moves of the economic management to Safa Gümüş from CNBC-e.
The comments by OECD officials drew a reaction from former Treasury Undersecretary, author, and academic Dr. Mahfi Eğilmez.
Reminding that the OECD stated that structural reforms could stabilize the current macroeconomic framework and increase long-term growth potential, Eğilmez made the following post on his X (Twitter) account:
"It has predicted that making permanent employment contracts more flexible, shifting the social protection system from severance pay to a more comprehensive unemployment insurance, and ensuring that legal minimum wages are affordable for firms could increase welfare and fiscal revenues by creating more formal jobs."
What the OECD is proposing is not structural reform, but an attempt framed under the name of Structural Adjustment to further set labor back against capital and load the bill created by the system onto the backs of the workers."
WHAT IS STRUCTURAL REFORM?
Stating at every opportunity that the Turkish economy cannot emerge from the situation it has fallen into without structural reforms, Professor Mahfi explained what he means by structural reforms as follows:
"Structural reform consists of deep-rooted steps such as ensuring the rule of law, freeing democracy and the economic system from cronyism, prioritizing merit in appointments, and making science dominant at every stage of education.
While describing the aforementioned regulations as "steps that will change the broken structure and are therefore worthy of the term structural reform," Mahfi Eğilmez concluded his words as follows:
"Steps that will result in suppressing wages and further weakening labor are not called structural reform, but structural deformation."