in Türkiye, galloping inflation causes excessive household debt

Inflation is so high in Turkey that many people live on credit. Even everyday products become luxury products.

In Turkey, inflation is wreaking havoc: 67% last year officially, but more than 127% according to independent economists. And one of the consequences is that the Turks literally live on credit. Each neighborhood grocery store, the “bakkal”, has a small notebook under the cash register where columns of names and numbers are lined up. “We give credit to the people we know, to the people in the neighborhood, explains Huseyin. What they buy on credit are drinks, chocolate, wafers, cigarettes, cheese, salads, olives… Everything. Before they bought on credit but at the end of the month they paid their debt. Now it’s over.”

Because everything becomes a luxury product. In supermarkets, baby milk is locked away and these grocery stores give less and less credit. Only the banks, encouraged by the government, are fighting to grant credit cards to the middle class, with a usury rate, which few are willing to admit.

Multiplication of disputes

Cafer, parking attendant for the metropolis, was kind enough to tell us about his daily life. His salary falls on the 5th of the month, on the 6th he already has to borrow. “I have four credit cards. One is not enough!says Cafer. You need a second one to pay off the debt on the first card, and with the other two you pay the interest on the debt. With this system you can never pay your debt, you can only pay the interest.”

“Here, basically if you only have one credit card, you’re OK, but if you have four, you’re screwed.”

Cafer, parking attendant

at franceinfo

Disputes are increasing. In this collection office, a huge building on the European side of the Bosphorus, where lawyer Ihsan Osman Yarsuvat takes us, files are piled up from floor to ceiling. “Judicial recovery cases continue to explode. We are talking about credit cards, but there are also bank loans, there are debts between individuals, he specifies. There are even debts for monthly subscriptions: electricity, gas, telecoms. And so it builds up, it builds up. This life on credit is now everyday life. It’s normal.”

And relations are increasingly tense within Turkish society. In a country where mutual aid has always served as a social safety net, we no longer even dare to knock on our neighbor’s house to ask for an egg or a little sugar.