​Erdogan forced into premature normalization

TURKEY - In Brief 02 Mar 2021 by Atilla Yesilada

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As you read these lines, President Erdogan will have unveiled another pretentious “Human Rights Reform Plan”, which I don’t intend to cover, because if the president truly wanted human rights improvements, he wouldn’t order dissidents and journalists to be kept behind bars. Instead, I want to bring to the attention of our audience Erdogan’s decision to gradually re-open the economy, dabbed “controlled normalization”, which is very likely to backfire. Erdogan’s risky gambit threatens any come-back in polls, as well as the nascent and largely alleged economic recovery. First, the details. Essentially, the controlled normalization plan has 3 pillars: Classifying provinces as low risk, medium, high and very high risk. Very few restrictions will be eased in high risk and very high risk provinces. Low and medium risk ones will enjoy more social mobility and economic freedom. In-school education will start in pre-school, sophomore and senior classes, the students of which need to be prepared to take exams to pick their choice of schools in the next level. Erdogan and his Cabinet took the decision to re-open the economy on a day, when the Ministry of Health reported 9.8K cases. As you see in the chart below, from Worldometer as usual, Turkey’s Covid-19 cases are accelerating. As I write these lines, cries of “too early” were already rising from numerous segments of the healthcare profession. Yet, one doesn’t need to have studied medicine or public health, to grasp why this move is outright silly. Consider the map below. Turkey’s economic hub Istanbul (high risk) is surrounded by very high risk cities, the travel from which (to and fro) is not subject to any restrictions. I can...