Turkey, which has a COVID-19 death rate of 0.8 percent, announced last Thursday it will begin to enforce its first full lockdown amid what is being called a “third wave” of infections.
The country of 82 million has recorded the grand total of 39,000 virus deaths since the COVID War broke some 14 months ago.
A person who works in Istanbul’s tourism field told CNBC there are fears the lockdown will “destroy the people who want to earn money for their beloved ones as the economy was hit terribly even before corona.”
The CNBC report said the tourism industry in Turkey sank 72 percent in the first 11 months of 2020.
As we have been reporting, the country has been hit hard by high inflation; unemployment keeps rising; and its currency, the lira, keeps hitting new lows against the U.S. dollar.
President Tayyip Erdogan said the county is in a war with a “triangle of evil,” which includes interest rates, inflation, and exchange rates, Reuters reported. He said about $165 billion from central bank “sources” were used to stabilize the economy.
Agathe Demarais, a global forecasting director at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC that the country’s inflation is at 15 percent, and youth unemployment is at 25 percent.
“As a person in the tourism field, we are also struggling because of the badly managed Corona situation by the government as after [the lockdown announcement] there were cancellations of the very few reservations we had.”
The CNBC report said another source of consternation was an alcohol sales ban from 29 April to 17 May. The report said secular Turks did not like the idea of the government essentially telling them they can’t have a drink inside their own home. The hashtag #alkolumedokunma, which means “don’t touch my alcohol,” trended on Turkish Twitter.
TREND FORECAST: Turkey’s economy will continue to weaken, inflation will continue to rise, and its currency will fall to new lows. As social unrest escalates, the ruling government will distract public dissention by ramping up war with the Kurds, increase its military presence in Syria, ramping up its conflict with Greece over disputed drilling, and increase military and financial support to the Ukraine government in its fight against separatists who align with Russia.
Indeed, as Gerald Celente has noted, “When all else fails, they take you to war.
