Economist warns of "the day after the elections," says "We are unaware of the disease"

Turkey's former Treasury under-secretary Mahfi Egilmez said in his article titled "The Day After the Elections" on Saturday that the current economic crisis in Turkey resembled non of the three big crisis of the near past, namely the foreign currency crisis in 1980, the crisis triggered in 1994 by the policy to pull interest rates below inflation, and the banking crisis in 2001. It resembles neither the downturns caused by the global crisis in 2008 and the pandemic in 2019, he added.

"First of all, people seem to be unaware that we're going through a crisis," he said. "When you say there is a crisis, some respond, 'What crisis?' and start referring to crowds at shopping malls, the high number of cars in traffic, the high number of customers in cafes and restaurants, the high number of people traveling. The same situation was observed in Argentina in the midst of a crisis."

He added:

"The most dangerous thing is not being aware of the illness. We were aware of it in previous crises. We had managed to cure the illness quickly by taking measures and with the support of IMF programs. This time we are in a much more difficult situation because we are not aware of the illness."

Some of the issues listed by Egilmez in the context of the crisis:

"We have almost totally left in the past buried the notions of rule of law and justice. Our education system is on a steady decline. We no longer have an objective to join the European Union. We are faced with numerous problems concerning migrants. The state institutions are no longer capable of providing service because of all the appointments made without any consideration for merit. The middle class has been destroyed because of a worsening income inequality. We are faced with an extra bill of $100-120 billion after the earthquake and disaster. We have to rebuild 6.5 million residences in urban reconstruction efforts. We are further overburdening the budget, out of which not much will be left in the second half of the year, and which will likely face a deficit of over 5% of the GDP. The net reserves of the Central Bank minus swaps are around minus $40-45 billion. Our foreign debt is around $450 billion."