The State is in Debt, the Nation is in Debt…

According to Central Bank data,

Turkey’s debt stock, which was 388.6 billion dollars in 2023,

rose to 539 billion dollars by the end of June 2026.

The situation of the nation is not much different.

The number of citizens with debts to banks and financial institutions has reached 44.2 million,

and individual loan and credit card debt has risen to 7 trillion 284 billion liras.

Approximately 7 thousand people fall into enforcement proceedings every day. (Birgün, 08.09.2026)

In short, living in debt has become an unchangeable fact of life.

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What we must question is,

Why is the state in such a massive amount of debt?

Why are we, as a nation, living in debt?

The answer to these questions is hidden within our lives.

From what we eat and drink,

to the devices and vehicles we use, everything is produced by foreigners.

At this point, the question we must answer is,

Why do we not produce, but instead buy from abroad?

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The year was 1950, and US delegations said for the “development and progress of Turkey,”

“The factories you have established will be closed or sold,

It is expensive to produce consumer goods, it is cheap abroad. They should be imported.”

30 years later, with the January 24 decisions,

“The state withdrew from the economy and production,

Foreign trade was liberalized, and foreign capital investments were encouraged.”

Thus, we transitioned to the free-market economy of the neoliberal order,

and abandoned the Republic’s mixed economy policy based on production.

We sold our factories, our production facilities, our ports, our power plants...

under the name of privatization.

Today, we are selling the Bosphorus bridges and highways,

which were built years ago and paid for with our taxes, under the name of privatization.

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In the end, we became a country that consumes rather than produces.

We bought what foreigners produced with foreign currency, and we consumed it,

When the foreign currency was not enough, we borrowed from foreigners,

And today we are mired in 539 billion dollars of debt.

In the first 7 months of 2026, we paid “1 trillion 755 billion TL” for debt interest.

We transitioned from our Republic’s understanding that “Industry is the backbone of economic independence.

What we used to buy from abroad, we will now make ourselves,”

to a free-market economy based on imports and consumption.

It is painful but true, those who consume without producing will eventually be exhausted.

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The way out of this dark picture is;

through contemporary education based on reason and science,

and a Republic with a production economy based on our own resources.

·       Raw materials in the field and the mine

·       Technology at the university

·       Consumer goods in the factory

By producing them ourselves, and sharing them fairly…

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“Societies that want to live comfortably

without working, without tiring, and without producing;

are doomed to lose first their dignity,

then their freedom,

and subsequently their independence and their future.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk