Tagşiş Lahmacun: If the strangeness is not overcome in Turkey, the desertification, drought and decay of this country will increase.

2023-06-30 08:23:42

Assistant Professor of Finance and Economy, Fatih Eldest made the following remarks in his analysis titled “Interest, devaluation, adulteration: Lives where Lahmacun is common.”
“Turkey has historically never seen a strangeness where class contradictions have become so acute, but where it is hardly reflected in politics. If this strangeness is not overcome in some way, the desertification, drought and decay of this country will increase even more. Unless a will to get rid of it develops and those who are exposed to class attack from above do not respond to it from below, this order will see even one lahmacun too much for those who make a living from this order, and it will continue to condemn it to a minimum life, a way of life that resembles anything but living.”

Fatih Elder’s 143 years after the 980 coup, we present this shocking observation to the attention of our readers as an analysis and observation that has been recorded in history:

„Interest, devaluation, adulteration: Lives where lahmacun is seen a lot.“

Fatih Elder

The year is 1979… There is a little more than a year before the September 12 coup. TÜSİAD puts advertisements in newspapers one after another against the ruling Ecevit government. Ecevit is not directly targeted in the advertisements, but a new route is sought for Turkish capitalism. Realizing that the current accumulation model has come to an end and that the current crisis cannot be overcome with the “import substitution accumulation regime”, the Turkish capital class wants an export-based accumulation model and a liberalized economy.

Well, doesn’t the Turkish capital class know that such a radical change demand is not possible through ordinary means, and that such a program based on lowering real wages, lowering labor costs and austerity cannot be put into effect in a conjuncture where the labor movement and the left are so strong?

Of course they know, so they call the coup. They are aware that liberalism can only be passed through an extraordinary regime and a military dictatorship, so they are rubbing their hands and waiting for September 12. That’s why September 12 is shaped as a capital coup, hitting the working class and the left above all else.

In the same year, that is, in 1979, Yalçın Küçük’s book “For a New Republic” is published. As the capitalist class calls for the coup, Küçük sees what is coming. With a prophetic foresight, he says that the soldiers will “remove Erbakan from the political scene and implement the Islamist religious policy represented by Erbakan more intensely”. He explains the reason for this as follows:

“People do not easily accept lahmacun every day. Really beautiful people deserve beautiful things. However, Turkey’s capitalism can only promise lahmacun to workers and laborers in the next period. But he knows that this alone will not be enough. Therefore, it will promise an ‘other world’ to the workers and laborers along with the lahmacun. So, Turkey will come under the pressure of a more extreme religiousness with its own internal dynamics.“

In fact, the events that the bosses called and announced the arrival of Küçük soon followed: First, the January 24 Decisions, which went far beyond the classical IMF programs and shifted the country to an export-based accumulation model, were announced, and then, when it was seen that these decisions could not be implemented under ordinary conditions, the capital coup, or September 12, came. September 12 shuts down unions, bans strikes, lowers wages and purchasing power, and promises the “other world” as a consolation to the austerity public. The way for Turkish-Islamic synthesis, sects, communities, compulsory religion courses and green capital is being paved.

We know who entered through the doors opened by the September 12 terrorists, but because we live in it, we can sometimes forget and become alienated; It has been exactly forty-three years since the coup took place, and twenty-one of these forty-three years have been spent with the AKP, moreover, another five years have been won on top of these twenty-one years. When we say that AKP is the product, continuation and logical limits of September 12, we are not shouting slogans, we are telling the truth. Neoliberalism, Turkish-Islamic synthesis and despotism… We can see that September 12 has been going on for forty-three years.

adulterated lahmacun

Even though it was withdrawn after the reactions, a “lahmacun directive” was published in line with this continuity. In the regulation, “if poultry meat and offal are detected in products such as pita bread, lahmacun, pastry mortar, the official control result is adulteration It was said that it should not be considered as a crime and punishments were arranged accordingly. In other words, forty-three years after September 12, Turkey’s capital class employees were seeing a lot of lahmacun, saying that in addition to minced meat from red meat, poultry meat and offal could be added to the lahmacun, and there was no harm in this. This was exactly the point.

Now let’s look at the meaning of the word “adultery” in this instruction, because there is something very ironic here. Adulteration means reducing the value of precious metals by adding worthless metals. In the Ottoman Empire, when paper money was not yet in use, when inflation increased, silver or more valuable metals were added to the gold coin and its value was reduced because more money had to be put into the market. Today, we are experiencing such an inflation that on the one hand, the value of the TL decreases, on the other hand, it is free to put chicken and offal in the lahmacun. Because now, Turkish capitalism cannot serve even a lahmacun that has not been adulterated to the masses it has impoverished. It knows what will happen to a family of four if they go to a restaurant even just to eat lahmacun.

We said inflation, let’s continue from there. For weeks, we have been explaining the new economic policies represented by Mehmet Şimşek and Hafize Gaye Erkan in this column. We say that these two will follow some kind of unnamed IMF program in the name of “fighting inflation”, that they have no choice but to raise interest rates, which will add unemployment to poverty.

The first step of the duo came this week and the Central Bank increased the policy rate from 8.5 percent to 15 percent. This increase was not as high as the markets expected, and it was disappointing, but what was done was not the product of incompetence or incompetence. On the contrary, the interest rate hike was limited in order to increase the exchange rates and depreciate the TL further. So why? Why does the Turkish lira need to lose value regularly in order for Turkish capitalism to survive, why does Turkish capitalism need continuous devaluation policies?

It is necessary to answer this question by going back to the 24 January Decisions and 12 September. When Turkish capitalism turned to export and started operating in international markets, it knew that this could only be possible through “price competition”. For this, two things were needed: Reducing labor costs, that is, lowering wages in real terms and lowering the value of TL. As these two were lower, Turkish products would also be cheaper and would find more buyers.

To say, “Today we are still living in the September 12 regime” means that we are still living in the political economy of September 12. Although Şimşek knew that the increase in the exchange rates would hinder the “fight against inflation”, he gave priority to exports and the revenues to come from there. He thought that he could fill the foreign exchange safe, which was full of money by increasing export revenues, even if it would increase inflation in the short run, and released the exchange rates.

So what will be the consequences of “swinging the rates”? First of all, we have all been impoverished on a dollar basis in the last month, our wages, which we have not seen even higher, have melted in dollar terms, we will become even poorer with the increase in all products and with the increase in inflation. This is the first. Secondly, every increase in the exchange rate has multiplied the debts in foreign currency, and we will eventually pay those debts. Thirdly, we will continue to transfer huge wealth to a group of rentiers, since the accounts in the Currency Protected Deposits are paid over the exchange rate increase, the Treasury does this, and the Treasury collects the money from the public as taxes.

Therefore, the “impoverishing growth” also looked after the interests of the Turkish capital class, while Şimşek’s “impairing shrinkage” program also took care of the interests of the same class. What we are experiencing right now is a class attack from the top to the public by the capitalist class, and that attack means the transfer of wealth from the bottom up, making the rich richer and the poor poorer, and even our people see lahmacun a lot.

In his speech at the Turkish Exporters Assembly recently, Erdoğan said:Throughout our political struggle, I have always seen our exporters as my friends of path, cause and destiny.He was right when he said “he was not only referring to MUSIAD, SMEs and provincial capital there. Turkey’s export capital brought the AKP government to work, today TÜSİAD-MUSIAD is keeping it alive. Because the legitimacy of the slave labor regime could only be achieved with tawakkul and the promise of an afterlife. AKP was the government that Turkish capitalism has been seeking since September 12, and it has managed to please all fractions of the capital, keep it together, and establish the permanence of the capital order. The needs, tendencies and ambitions of Turkish capitalism have returned to us as more poverty, more reaction, more nationalist valor.

If Turkey is a labor hell today, if no unions, insecure, working with minimum wage has become the norm, if religionism and nationalism have taken the people captive, castrated their minds, made them stupid and society is rapidly disintegrating, decaying and exiling, behind this is Turkey’s capital system, Turkey’s capital system. class and right-wing politics/order politics acting on its behalf.

Historically, Turkey has never seen an oddity where class contradictions have become so acute, but where it is hardly reflected in politics. If this strangeness is not overcome in some way, the desertification, drought and decay of this country will increase even more. Unless a will to get rid of it develops and those who are subjected to class attack from above do not respond to it from below, this order will see even one lahmacun too much for those who make a living from this order, and will continue to condemn it to a minimum life, a way of life that resembles everything else. (Source Sol Newspaper, Fatih Elder)