On this, the first anniversary of the beginning of the Gezi Park protests, below is a brief account of what could lay ahead for citizens after a decade of 'unprecedented growth.' What usually lies ahead of indebtedness, high unemployment and neoliberal policies but austerity measures and widespread immiseration?
As the municipal elections of last March made clear, a large share of the population is still happy to give Erdoğan and his companions a thumbs-up for the “excellent job” they have been doing. And with this we arrive at the crux of the problem: Turkey’s growth in the past decade has been unprecedented in the country’s history. Since 2002 the economy quadrupled in size as a massive construction boom totally transformed the country and its major cities. The rise of the AKP, which was established in 2001 and came to power in 2002, coincided with this boom. Erdoğan immediately opened the country’s doors to the IMF and enthusiastically implemented its neoliberal economic prescriptions centred on debt-financed construction and consumption.
In today’s Turkey, consumption and construction are closely linked, with hundreds of malls having been built in the past decade-and-a-half alone, and consumer spending accounting for about 70% of GDP. Corporations with close links to the government have easy access to cheap money and favorable contracts, and are untroubled by the lack of worker safety regulations, environmental destruction, or the eviction and destruction of marginalized neighborhoods. However, brand new empty malls will bring little revenue, and this is where Turkey’s major specter enters the stage: cheap consumer credit. On a population of about 74 million, there are 57 million credit cards in circulation with a collective debt of $45 billion. Consumer credit has been the engine of Turkey’s growth model for the past decade; the magic trick that filled empty malls, and the opium that kept the majority of people quiet, happy and obedient.
However, a combination of the need to repay $129.1 billion in short-term external debt in 2015, an end to the ultra-low interest rates which made credit so cheap and available to everyone, and the drying up of foreign capital inflows due to the scaling back of cheap central bank lending in Europe and the US will mean that sooner rather than later Turkish banks will want their money back; money that does not exist because it has been spent on fancy dresses, the latest smartphones, widescreen televisions and new cars — or simply because it has been eaten, as for millions of ordinary working people wages are not sufficient to make it to the end of the month. In fact, Turkey is facing a very severe economic crisis once this bubble is going to burst, and it will be the poor and working people who will suffer most.
As we have seen in countries like Argentina and Greece, however, this kind of economic shock can spur on a rapid social awakening, and perhaps the coming crash will allow people to see through the games Erdoğan and his companions have been playing for all these years. The workers of the Kazova factory in Istanbul may be a case in point: they had to hit rock-bottom first — getting fired while being owed months of back-pay, being accused of theft, tear-gassed by the police and beaten by thugs — before they realized how they had been tricked and fooled, and that they needed to stand up and fight to reclaim what was rightfully theirs. What resulted was something that inspired many in the Gezi movement: one of the first worker-run factories in Turkey.
This kind of autonomous working-class mobilization will be a crucial component of future social struggles in Turkey and beyond. As Michael Hardt commented on the recent Soma disaster while in Istanbul for a series of lectures:
“I think the tragic mining disaster provides an opportunity for the articulation of the traditional elements of the working class with the new urban class that was active in Gezi protests. This is a turning point in the public recognition of the destruction of Erdoğan’s neo-liberal policies that create wealth for a few and undermine the well-being of the many including the working class.”
Today’s “celebration” of Gezi’s first anniversary may not succeed in taking back the park and reclaiming it as part of the commons, nor is likely to have a major impact on the constituted powers, which comfortably hide behind a wall of police batons and tear gas canisters, cemented with lies, denial and ignorance. But what it will do is keep the revolutionary spirit alive and show the ruling classes of this country that the people refuse to turn their backs and remain silent in the face of oppression, inequality, exploitation and grave human suffering. Moreover, these protests will continue to pave the way for a common political project that may one day be able to provide a genuine alternative to the authoritarian neoliberalism of Erdoğan’s embattled government.
One year on the Gezi spirit still manages to make a hundred thousand hearts beat faster. Whether those hearts belong to dreamers or to visionaries, only time will tell — but one thing is for sure: today we resist!
taken from here
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