Statistics is the most elegant form of sorcery in the modern age. Numbers, we are told, do not speak. Yet in the right hands they scream, whisper, cry or applaud. The issue is never simply what the data says, but who is holding the light over it.
Türkiye’s political and economic atmosphere in recent years has unfolded precisely within such a landscape. The widening gap between the figures announced by the state and the realities lived by ordinary citizens has ceased to be a merely technical debate; it has become a full-fledged crisis of public trust. While television commentators speak of “disinflation” and economic stabilization, people return from markets with half-empty shopping bags, retirees wonder how to stretch their pensions to the middle of the month, and parents feel humiliated when calculating how much pocket money they can afford to give their children. And in exactly such an atmosphere, Türkiye approaches the Eid al-Adha (Sacrifice) holiday facing not only economic suffocation, but also a deep uncertainty about the future of its political system itself.
The recent “absolute nullity” ruling concerning the Republican People’s Party (CHP) has pushed politics into the realm of legal surrealism. The possibility of treating the main opposition party’s 2023 congress as legally nonexistent, questioning an elected leadership and trapping political legitimacy inside courtroom corridors has further darkened an already fragile national psychology. Because this is no longer merely an internal CHP matter. A significant part of society reads the entire episode through a far broader anxiety: “What happens tomorrow?” When economic uncertainty merges with political uncertainty, what emerges is not simply poverty, but fear of the future itself.
Türkiye’s mood before the holiday: As tables shrink, anxiety grows
Personally, I have never fully internalized the ritual of animal sacrifice. While I respect its religious dimension, I have always been uneasy with the way it sometimes transforms into social pressure or an economic status symbol. Yet what Türkiye is experiencing today has evolved into something far beyond questions of personal faith. For millions of people, sacrificing an animal is no longer primarily a religious obligation; it has become an economic impossibility. The surge in livestock prices over the past year has not merely been steep, but almost irrational in scale. Feed costs, fuel prices, transportation expenses and the broader inflationary spiral have hit the sacrificial livestock market with full force. In many regions, prices for animals have risen by 70 to 150 percent compared to last year. As a result, a sharp decline in the number of sacrifices this year is widely expected.
But the real issue lies beyond the numbers themselves.
For decades in Türkiye, being able to perform the sacrifice was not simply an act of worship for lower and middle income families. It was also a symbolic declaration: “I am still standing.” Families borrowed money, shared costs with relatives and neighbors, and did whatever they could to preserve the dignity of the holiday. Today, however, millions of households are no longer calculating how to buy a sacrificial animal; they are wondering whether they can afford new clothes for their children at all. Holiday tables are shrinking. Family visits are postponed because transportation costs have become prohibitive. Grandparents quietly calculate how much money they can place into the hands of their grandchildren without embarrassment.
And in precisely such an atmosphere, the government’s 4,000-lira holiday bonus for retirees has created, for many, not a feeling of support but the impression of a symbolic tip.
Because the issue is not the nominal amount itself. It is purchasing power.
Today, Türkiye’s minimum pension stands at around 20,000 lira. Yet in a country where average rents in major cities have climbed into the 20,000–30,000 lira range, such an income no longer represents a living wage; it is a measure of social collapse. The minimum wage fares little better. In many cities, it can barely cover rent alone. Electricity, natural gas, transportation, internet bills, food expenses and child-related costs consume incomes long before the month ends.
And perhaps the cruelest aspect of all is this:
Official figures suggest incomes are rising.
But people’s standards of living are falling.
The chasm between official statistics and market reality
This is precisely why the controversy surrounding the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) has moved far beyond a technical debate over methodology. Inflation is not merely an economic indicator. It is the worker’s wage. The retiree’s standard of living. The civil servant’s salary adjustment. The tenant’s threshold of survival. TÜİK’s refusal for years to fully disclose the detailed basket used in inflation calculations, even in the face of court rulings demanding greater transparency, has deepened the country’s crisis of confidence.
Because people are now asking a simple question:
“If I see prices doubling in the market, how can official inflation be half of that?”
And this question has become political as much as economic.
In modern states, statistical institutions do not merely produce data; they also produce a shared sense of reality. If citizens cease to believe the figures announced by the state, the economy transforms from a financial crisis into a psychological one. Shopkeepers begin pricing according to fear of the future. Landlords raise rents according to distrust. Citizens rush toward foreign currency, gold or property in an attempt to protect themselves. The economy ceases to function through mathematics and begins functioning through insecurity.
That is precisely what Türkiye has experienced in recent years.
The price of tomatoes in the marketplace has become more convincing than graphs displayed on television screens.
“Absolute nullity” and the political psychology of the economy
Against such a fragile economic backdrop, the “absolute nullity” ruling concerning the CHP has further intensified the country’s sense of uncertainty. People are no longer asking only, “Will I be able to survive economically?” They are also asking, “What will happen to the country’s political balance tomorrow?”
One of the greatest problems facing the Turkish economy today is not inflation alone. It is unpredictability. Investors cannot foresee the future. Shopkeepers cannot foresee the future. Citizens cannot foresee the future.
When the future of a country’s main opposition party becomes the subject of courtroom disputes, when legal concepts turn into instruments within broader arguments over political engineering, economic confidence erodes even further. Because economies function not only through interest rates and exchange rates, but also through a sense of legal stability.
People in Türkiye are no longer exhausted merely by poverty. They are exhausted by the denial of their poverty. And for precisely this reason, the crisis expanding across Türkiye is not merely economic. It is also moral and institutional.
Because citizens now trust their lived experiences more than the figures announced by the state.
Because people no longer look at statistics; they look at their increasingly empty kitchens.
Because as the holiday approaches, a significant portion of society is thinking not about worship, but about how to walk past the butcher shop without humiliation.
And because when people in a country begin worrying simultaneously about both the future of their wallets and the future of democracy itself, the issue ceases to be merely economic. If economic contraction and collective pessimism rob younger generations and lower and middle income groups of their ability to make plans for tomorrow; if owning a home, starting a family, raising children or even taking a modest vacation begins to feel like an unattainable fantasy; if the idea of “building a future” is replaced entirely by the instinct merely to “survive the day,” then the social fabric itself has begun to quietly unravel.
