by MEHMET OZBAGCI
Do you think that Recep Tayyip Erdogan—who has carried out the most massive privatizations in Turkey’s history, banned countless strikes, driven down working-class wages, and turned millions of refugees into providers of cheap labor under slavery-like conditions—could be a socialist?1 I am aware that this question sounds absurd, but unfortunately there is a reality even more absurd: For a significant segment of Turkish youth, the answer to this question is indisputably yes. In their eyes, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party represent a socialist and even communist regime with Islamic tendencies.
The reasons attributed to Erdogan’s socialist character are wide-ranging: interest rates have been kept low at the expense of rising exchange rates to prevent the unemployment rate from going up before the general election; the minimum wage has been raised, even though it remains below the inflation rate; and the belief that the government excessively taxes capital, a belief completely contrary to reality. But even if the reasons vary, the fact they point to does not change. A part of the Turkish youth condemns and labels as socialist all economic policies that go beyond the neoliberal discourse or have the slightest possibility of benefiting the working class.
How did these young people—whose social practices are limited to the Internet because they have no money for a coffee with peers, who almost all live with their families because of impossible rents, who are either part of the unemployed majority or are exploited for long hours with wages that lose their real value day by day—become convinced that the source of their problems is “socialism” and “socialist policies”? Why do they adopt a market fundamentalism similar to the Austrian School economists who declare that even Milton Friedman is a socialist?
I think that the answer to these questions is less a result of Turkey’s current political, social, and economic structure and more a result of the global phenomenon of crypto currency. The widespread ownership of crypto currencies has created the grounds for a very reactionary economic understanding among broad social segments, especially among young people.
Financialization for Everyone!
The unofficial start of Turkey’s currency crisis in 2018 was a wake-up call from middle-class dreams for some segments of the working class: Consumerism, which was at the center of the artificial identity of the middle class, was becoming difficult to maintain. Not only did the Turkish lira lose its value day by day, reducing real working-class income, but cryptocurrencies, which had been a niche technology, also gained extraordinary value and garnered great interest.
The continuous depreciation of the local currency was leading not only investors, meaning crypto enthusiasts, but also ordinary Turkish citizens to turn to cryptocurrencies in order to preserve the value of their savings.2 In an environment where there was no regulation on cryptocurrencies and where the state supported nationalist-flavored speculative projects like Turkcoin, a new cryptocurrency exchange or project was announced almost every day.3
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