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Lira Collapse Leaves Turks Bewildered, Opposition Angry

People change money at a currency exchange office in Istanbul, Turkey November 23, 2021. (Reuters)
People change money at a currency exchange office in Istanbul, Turkey November 23, 2021. (Reuters)
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Lira Collapse Leaves Turks Bewildered, Opposition Angry

People change money at a currency exchange office in Istanbul, Turkey November 23, 2021. (Reuters)
People change money at a currency exchange office in Istanbul, Turkey November 23, 2021. (Reuters)

Anxious Turks struggled to keep up with a bewildering collapse in their currency and the main opposition party leader said the country was experiencing its darkest "catastrophe" as the lira slumped 15% on Tuesday against the dollar.

Tuesday's meltdown follows weeks of steep falls in the lira which have already driven up prices, leaving ordinary Turks reconsidering everything from their holiday plans to weekly grocery shopping.

"There has not been such a catastrophe in the history of the Republic," said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the opposition Republican People's Party, blaming the currency freefall on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has led the country since 2003.

"At this point, you are a fundamental national security problem for the Republic of Turkey," Kilicdaroglu said.

Erdogan has pressured the central bank to slash interest rates in a move he says will boost exports, investment and jobs, but which critics say will further fuel double-digit inflation and erode the lira, cutting deeply into Turks' earnings.

Shoppers at a central Ankara mall said they could not take their eyes off the lira rate, which plunged as far as 13.45 to the dollar on Tuesday. A year ago it was 8 to the dollar, last month it reached 9 and last week it hit 10.

"I've become unable to work without following the dollar," said 28-year-old advertising agency worker Selin.

"I don't think there is a single day where I don't have to watch my budget, and the calculation changes 100 times by the time I get next month's salary. There is nothing left, including toilet paper, that I buy without thinking carefully."

Former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, a founding member of Erdogan's ruling, Islamist-rooted AK Party before breaking away to form his own party, described the president's economic measures as "treason and not ignorance".

Kilicdaroglu, Davutoglu and some other opposition leaders have announced emergency meetings to discuss the currency after Tuesday's crash - the lira's second biggest fall ever.

'We are sinking'
Turks took to social media to express dismay. Top trending topics on Twitter were dominated by hashtags on the economy including "We are sinking", "Government resign" and "We cannot make ends meet".

In the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, shop owners burned what appeared to be fake dollars on the street in a symbolic gesture of protest, saying: "We cannot sleep, we don't know about our future."

Several people who spoke to Reuters said that as soon as they received their salaries or pensions, they converted them into foreign currency.

"I have asked for an advance on my monthly salary just to convert it into dollars so that I can maintain some sense of value in my earnings," said Emirhan Metin, 28, a lawyer in Istanbul. "It's nearly impossible to focus or talk about anything else at this point."

Haluk, a 36-year-old freelance film editor, said he was often paid with a lag of six to eight months. "So the contract I signed last month is worth 20% less today. Who knows how much it will be worth when I get paid six months from now?"

Doruk Akpek, CEO at a menstrual hygiene brand startup, said he tried to keep his savings in dollars and crypto-currency, but added the situation was tougher for those who only had lira.

"There is also a psychological unhappiness, you see the country collapsing in front of your eyes. It impacts the morale and motivation of people," Akpek said.

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Climate Change Imperils Drought-Stricken Morocco’s Cereal Farmers and Its Food Supply

A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)
A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)
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Climate Change Imperils Drought-Stricken Morocco’s Cereal Farmers and Its Food Supply

A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)
A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)

Golden fields of wheat no longer produce the bounty they once did in Morocco. A six-year drought has imperiled the country's entire agriculture sector, including farmers who grow cereals and grains used to feed humans and livestock.

The North African nation projects this year's harvest will be smaller than last year in both volume and acreage, putting farmers out of work and requiring more imports and government subsidies to prevent the price of staples like flour from rising for everyday consumers.

"In the past, we used to have a bounty — a lot of wheat. But during the last seven or eight years, the harvest has been very low because of the drought," said Al Housni Belhoussni, a small-scale farmer who has long tilled fields outside of the city of Kenitra.

Belhoussni's plight is familiar to grain farmers throughout the world confronting a hotter and drier future. Climate change is imperiling the food supply and shrinking the annual yields of cereals that dominate diets around the world — wheat, rice, maize and barley.

In North Africa, among the regions thought of as most vulnerable to climate change, delays to annual rains and inconsistent weather patterns have pushed the growing season later in the year and made planning difficult for farmers.

In Morocco, where cereals account for most of the farmed land and agriculture employs the majority of workers in rural regions, the drought is wreaking havoc and touching off major changes that will transform the makeup of the economy. It has forced some to leave their fields fallow. It has also made the areas they do elect to cultivate less productive, producing far fewer sacks of wheat to sell than they once did.

In response, the government has announced restrictions on water use in urban areas — including on public baths and car washes — and in rural ones, where water going to farms has been rationed.

"The late rains during the autumn season affected the agriculture campaign. This year, only the spring rains, especially during the month of March, managed to rescue the crops," said Abdelkrim Naaman, the chairman of Nalsya. The organization has advised farmers on seeding, irrigation and drought mitigation as less rain falls and less water flows through Morocco's rivers.

The Agriculture Ministry estimates that this year's wheat harvest will yield roughly 3.4 million tons (3.1 billion kilograms), far less than last year's 6.1 million tons (5.5 billion kilograms) — a yield that was still considered low. The amount of land seeded has dramatically shrunk as well, from 14,170 square miles (36,700 square kilometers) to 9,540 square miles (24,700 square kilometers).

Such a drop constitutes a crisis, said Driss Aissaoui, an analyst and former member of the Moroccan Ministry for Agriculture.

"When we say crisis, this means that you have to import more," he said. "We are in a country where drought has become a structural issue."

Leaning more on imports means the government will have to continue subsidizing prices to ensure households and livestock farmers can afford dietary staples for their families and flocks, said Rachid Benali, the chairman of the farming lobby COMADER.

The country imported nearly 2.5 million tons of common wheat between January and June. However, such a solution may have an expiration date, particularly because Morocco's primary source of wheat, France, is facing shrinking harvests as well.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization ranked Morocco as the world's sixth-largest wheat importer this year, between Türkiye and Bangladesh, which both have much bigger populations.

"Morocco has known droughts like this and in some cases known droughts that las longer than 10 years. But the problem, this time especially, is climate change," Benali said.