Is Turkey too expensive for Turks?

One afternoon a few months ago, five friends were cruising down an Istanbul highway on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) when one broke down and the group pulled over for a closer look. Just then a Porsche SUV came barreling along and smashed into them, ultimately killing one of the friends, the father of a newborn.

The SUV driver happened to be under the legal driving age of 18 and the son of a celebrity plastic surgeon, Bulent Cihantimur, and his author ex-wife, Eylem Tok. Before police could issue felony charges, Tok rushed to the scene and whisked her 17-year-old son Timur out of the country, flying to Egypt and then the US.

Most departures are less urgent and more planned, but a cresting wave of Turkish nationals has been embarking on similar journeys of escape. More than 100,000 applied for EU asylum last year, behind only Syrians and Afghans and a five-fold increase from 2021. Over the same period, the number of Turks illegally crossing the US-Mexico border leapt 10-fold.

Perhaps most worrying, research suggests more than four out of 10 of those leaving are under age 35, which means Turkey is facing the loss of the best and brightest of its next generation.

Is the primary “push” factor political? Many progressive Turks dislike what they view as a conservative turn under the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP): increased restrictions on nightlife, dress, and media content, greater religiosity in education and beyond.

Following a wave of terror attacks and a violent coup attempt years ago, Turkish authorities launched a sustained cracked down on all potential foes, from Kurdish politicians and Islamist radicals to leftist activists, journalists, and philanthropists. With the next national vote set for 2028, last year’s re-election of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have convinced many this fraught political climate would continue indefinitely.

But I’d wager the departures are more about the economy. Turkey has been wrestling high inflation, currency devaluation and under-employment for six years, leaving million struggling to pay their bills. Despite a trickle of positive financial news in recent months, the country may be reaching an inflationary tipping point.

Consulting firm Mercer’s latest cost-of-living survey shows Istanbul and Ankara with by far the world’s biggest leaps in housing prices, with the former up an eye-watering 300 percent. Outside the volatile Global South, no city in the world saw a sharper living costs increase last year than Istanbul: a cup of coffee is up 135 percent, while haircuts and gas doubled. And going on holiday offers little relief: multiple reports from the Mediterranean resort town of Antalya show hotels have been charging Turkish guests more than foreigners.

The current exodus — which comes after more than a million students, academics, professionals, Kurds and suspected puschists left in 2015–18 due to violence in the southeast and government purges — may be starting to erode key institutions like healthcare and academia.

One Turkish MP says more than 15,000 doctors have left the country in the past few years, seeking to avoid the low pay and acts of violence increasingly common in Turkish hospitals. Seven of 10 Turks aged 15–24 think the country lacks a quality modern education and more than 63 percent would prefer to live abroad. Also, among 10 major global cities, Istanbul has the most expensive beer and the fewest co-working spaces — a sure turn-off for techies, entrepreneurs and creative types.

The cherry on top is that Turkey’s population looks set to decline. Government data shows the fertility rate has fallen from 2.4 in 2001 to 1.5 today, below the 2.1 replacement rate. “This is an existential threat, a disaster for Turkey,” Erdogan said in response.

He’d be happy to know that getting out is getting more difficult. Smugglers are charging higher rates and US President Joe Biden just placed sharp limits on asylum requests. The EU is rejecting more Schengen visa applications and asylum requests and taking a harsher stand on migration. The EU is also paying Turkey billions of euros to keep the 4M refugees its hosting from entering the bloc, which means a wave of arriving Turks could put a damper on Ankara-Brussels ties.

Still, for most, the likeliest escape route remains a perilous boat ride across the Evros or Aegean. Only the privileged few can fly away like Eylem Tok and her teen son. After a stop in New York City, the duo ended up in Boston and were visiting an exclusive private school early this month when US authorities swooped in to detain them.

Ankara requested their extradition and Timur’s father, a tireless self-promoter who refers to himself as “Doctor B”, offered one of his homes in Turkey, worth $2 million, as collateral to get his son released on bail. But last week a US court ruled to keep Timur, a US citizen charged with involuntary manslaughter, in a correctional facility.

Tok is also still in custody and has a court date this week. Given their crimes and apparent entitlement, and reports that Tok’s purported biography is mostly fiction, most Turks seem to think mother and son are getting their just desserts.

More than anything, Timur’s deadly accident has shined a spotlight on how Turkey’s elite are blithely crushing the country’s less well-off. Not one but two British news outlets this month pointed to the Aegean peninsula of Bodrum as the swank summer hotspot for Europe’s jetset. And with more and more Turks spending their lira in Greece this summer due to a new visa scheme, the government last week announced a sharp increase in the fee to travel abroad, from 150 lira to 3,000, prompting outrage.

Partially state-owned Turkish Airlines recently announced that Turkish passengers flying to Latin America — potential US entry points — need to show return tickets and fully booked hotel stays when boarding. The message seems to be that the haves can go wherever, while the have-nots need to stay and restart the economy.

Most of the world’s 115 million displaced have no real choice. Syrians and Ukrainians flee roiling conflict, for instance, Afghans and Iranians extremist rule, Eritreans crushing poverty. That so many Turks are willingly choosing to leave and wade into this river of human desperation underscores just how tough it has gotten to live well in Turkey.