When the coronavirus erupted in China, Turkey like all major states underestimate the severity of the breakout. Instead of sending its experts to China, Turkey even has not sent its experts to China for data transfer. Turkish approach was quiet astonishing if not nondescript; If China with its 1.3 billion population managed such crisis and came out of this with couple of deaths and some tenths of thousands patients, Turkey can come out of this coronavirus breakout with much more lower number than China has done. Moreover, Turkey has started to show good signs of economic achievements since second quarter of 2019. Government considered that any restrictions to be placed against coronavirus would jeopardize the economic recovering trend. Thus, government chose to neglect it or at least act coronavirus breakout like common flue threat
As of today (11 April 2020), Turkey has decided to apply quarantine regime to 30 major cities during 12th and 13th of April. This already shows that Turkey finds it difficult to fight with coronavirus threat and is concerned with the rising cases day by day.
Turkey is not the only country with economic problems of course nor it is the only country struggling to manage the pandemic. However, it is vital to understand why Turkey has chosen this path. Thus, would lead us to project healthy projection how Turkey would come out of this pandemic.
In the beginning, AKP government reluctantly and with silence tried to implement “immunity building strategy” once the pandemic started. While AKP government has seen that Netherlands and UK have failed to achieve the goa, Turkey started to develop another strategy - work as much as possible while keep others at home. However this has failed greatly when the number of cases started rising.
Public is angry, if not severely disappointed with government how they are forced to choose between its health and its economic well-being. Construction unions are calling for safer conditions which accounts for 2.5 million jobs. Mining industry is also struggled how to respond this pandemic. The industry leaders are not happy with the petitions accumulating to $15.4 billion since it might only help to scratch the surface of what us needed to manage the crisis. Moreover, the package is far away from giving money to people who call for safety nets in place. While the opposition party donation campaigns are barred by AKP government, it raises criticism among public to government since government is widely fails to take measures.
All indications emphasize that there are lack of better options. That is why government started to raise donation campaign “National Solidarity Campaign” although public criticizes AKP government that why they should be providing money while other states are giving money to its citizens. That is because government has no major funds or reserves to combat with the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, a full shutdown of economy had not been be an option to Turkey at least so far.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) have projected that the global trade would reduce by 13% at optimistic scenario and would plummet by 32% at worst-case scenario. Of course, it even construes worse for Turkey. At this moment, the combat against the coronavirus pandemic does not create unity among the Turkish population due to lack of economic measurements and mistrust in health measurements.
This illustrates a deeper mistrust between the constituent of AKP and the government itself. President Erdogan knows the economic results of Branson crisis still remains a strong memory in people’s mind. AKP policymakers know quite well that the economic damage is in pernicious stage. This fear would compel the government to take severe risks to save the economy.
