CENTRAL NEWS
Erdogan’s palace costs over $600 million, is formed of 1,000 rooms and has a daily expense bill of $300,000. At the other end of a spectrum, today, a father poisoned himself and his family of four, including a five and nine-year-old, with cyanide because of unemployment.
A family of four; Selim Şimşek (36), Sultan Şimşek (38), Ceren Şimşek (9) and Ali Çınar Şimşek (5) was found dead in their Antalya home. Crime scene investigation reports found traces of cyanide in the house and a 2-paged letter in which father Şimşek explained that he had suffered financial difficulties and had been unemployed for nine months. “I apologise to everyone, but I don’t have any other option left. We are putting an end to our lives,” he wrote.
Upon further investigation, it was revealed that father Şimşek was heavily in debt and had been unable to pay expenses such as rent and apartment fees for a long time.
A similar event occurred on November 5, when a note reading “Attention: there is cyanide inside, call the police, do not enter” was noticed on a door in Istanbul. Inside lay the bodies of four siblings, Cüneyt (48), Oya (54), Kamuran (60) and Yaşar Yetişkin (56), who had seen salvage in suicide as they were unable to pay off accumulated debt. Yet poverty had followed them even through death. The siblings, members of a large family, were dumped in a graveyard for the abandoned as the remaining family members were also unable to meet burial expenses.
The situations mentioned above are only examples of a secret tragedy unfolding in Turkey. The unemployment rate in Turkey increased to 13.9% in July 2019, from 10.8% in the same month of the previous year.
The population of Turkey and Northern Kurdistan combined is 80 million. The number of employed persons in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan is reported at 27 million in July 2019.
In Turkey, in particular, unemployment is the number one reason for widespread cases of depression and suicide.
Historically, suicide rates increase most during the economic crisis years. For example: in 1993 there were 1229 suicides, but this number increased to 1536 in 1994 when the financial crisis occurred.
Doubtless, Erdogan will point fingers at the dangerous Cyanide chemical and most likely ban it from public use, declaring it the devil. Still, there may be no space left under Turkeys extensive carpets.
The Turkish state’s invasion of Rojava and North Syria comes at a fragile time for Turkey’s economy with inflation still running at 15% annually. “Turkey’s banking system continues to be in a coma,” says Anastasia Levashova, an emerging markets portfolio manager at Blackfriars Asset Management.
The military campaign against the SDF poses more significant threats to the diminishing economy, with Volkswagen delaying the green light on a new $1.4 billion auto plant, a sign of the longer-term costs that Turkey might pay.
Yet there may be more damage to come with serious threats of sanctions from US senators for the Rojava and Northern Syria incursion, along with the sanctions bill for the newly recognised Armenian genocide.
