Well-being of citizens under Erdoğan regime

Grand Bazaar, Kayseri (Photo: AA/File)

The Erdoğan Regime's bad reputation has been coming into sight within the global democratic circles. Especially, its foreign affairs — flirting with the Trump Administration and its support for Putin's Russia — have been criticized for a long time.

Yet, there is another sub-context to Erdoğan's regime which is as important as its international ties. It is the impact of this regime on the well-being of its citizens that needs to be examined. And this task must be fulfilled to comprehend how post-fascist regimes operate and what kind of social wreck they leave behind.

In a recent study executed in the name of the Equality Studies Association, we shed light on this different side of the story[^1]. We used the concept of well-being to express the citizens' physical, mental, and spiritual characteristics.

We adopted a well-being approach that utilizes the concept of well-being from a human flourishing point of view. By doing so, we could differentiate our research's perspective from neoliberal/individualistic approaches, such as the one adopted by OECD.

While measuring the well-being of the citizens of Türkiye, we defined the activities that determine the lives of individuals — including education, health, work, political participation and management, social bonds and relations, the relationship of citizens with the environment, and political, economic and physical security, which are the main measures among the indicators of well-being. In addition to these, we evaluated justice (especially income justice), the existence of institutions serving the common good, and the existence of dignified life conditions where citizens are valued and respected among the components of well-being.

Distrust, polarization and violence

We can, now, start with the results of our study.

One of the significant findings is that the impact of the level of distrust towards political institutions and individuals, political polarization and political violence on the citizens' physical, mental and emotional well-being in the context of authoritarianism in Türkiye are striking. Although politics is a large part of the daily agenda for the society, the rate of participation of the society in politics remains very low/inadequate.

The majority of the citizens do not think that engaging in political activities has a significant effect on improving their life conditions. Moreover, 16.3 percent of the citizens think that political participation would weaken their social ties and lead them to socio-political exclusion and ostracization. 

The citizens of Türkiye follow and mind politics closely due to the tense politicization trend that they think is generated mostly by the government. Yet they do not have a collective expectation, and they do not take politics as a medium that will institutionalize the common good. Politics is not something they take part in to improve their living conditions, it is something they have to be exposed to.

With the research we carried out, we also reached findings conflicting with the findings mentioned above. For example, although the common approach to politics is negative, findings of our research show that the participation rate is likely to increase in the near future conjunctively. More than 27 percent of the citizens are willing to join political actions in coming months. The percentage mentioned is almost twice the active membership numbers of political parties and groups.

These promising figures show us that there is still hope for a future democracy in Türkiye, despite the destruction of the bonds between the citizens in Türkiye and political institutions and politicians themselves by the acts of the post-fascist regime.

Working poverty

More than 60 percent of the citizens of Türkiye believe that economic conditions in Türkiye have a negative impact on their lives. Also, more than half of the employed citizens underline that their monthly expenses precede their income. The insufficiency of the wages makes it clear that "working poverty" is a common phenomenon among the citizens of Türkiye. The working poverty phenomenon makes also clear why the idea of ​​universal citizenship income is widely supported by the significant part of the participants of our study.

In addition, another striking finding is, we observe that the worsening of income status was accompanied by worsening conditions in the working life. Almost 60 percent of the citizens who are employed at the moment of the research conducted believe that if they lose their job, they will not be able to find a new one, or they will be able to find only a job with worse conditions. In contrast to improving the well-being of the citizens, these working conditions are ideal for Erdogan's regime because it obliges citizens to accept the working conditions regardless of their satisfaction.

There is also one more crucial economic phenomenon that alters the well-being of the citizens in Türkiye: indebtedness. Indebtedness has been spreading over the last years faster than ever, and at the moment, we see that its effects on the well-being of citizens are not just in terms of economic, but also related to their social ties. Half of the population has trouble/ difficulty in meeting their basic needs. Since they are indebted, more than 40 percent of them either do additional work or endure poor working conditions. What is really alarming is that more than a quarter of the citizens claim that being indebted ruins their relationships with their families.

Social relations

At the same time, there is also a significant deterioration in the citizens' well-being when it comes to their social relations. More than 60 percent of the citizens in Türkiye believe that the sum of existing social relations in Türkiye has a negative effect on their physical and mental state. One of the main reasons for that is different forms of violence. For instance, a large part of the society thinks that violence against women has increased. Besides the patriarchal motivations, they also point out economic crisis, and politicians, who encourage violence against women.

It is remarkable to see how the policy of demonizing LGBTIQ+ individuals, which is a disposition frequently used in the construction of the social base of the authoritarian regime, is perceived by the citizens. The number of those who think that violence and injustice are being done to LGBTIQ+ people in Türkiye is higher than those who disagree with this statement. Moreover, this might be taken as proof that with the deterioration of the well-being of the citizens, the ideological hegemony of the regime diminishes as well.

We also found out that apart from violence, the loosening of the social ties plays a significant role in the deterioration of the social well-being of the citizens in Türkiye. This consequence causes problems such as loneliness, social exclusion, and anxiety/depression. More than 75 percent of the citizens state that they had to face anxiety and/or depression problems in the past few years. Furthermore, only 10 percent of them had the opportunity to seek private or public professional help.

Post-fascist regime ruins the confidence of citizens

We believe that it is essential to carry out a dynamic analysis of the future rather than defining a passive state of well-being based on the effects of political, economic, and social conditions in the past. And the results we obtained unmasks how a post-fascist regime ruins the confidence and expectations of its citizens. More than 72 percent of the society thinks very severely about the course of things in the country, more than 60 percent of them do not feel socially safe as a citizen of the Republic of Türkiye, and most importantly, only 13 percent of the citizens are hopeful about their future. That is why we give importance to how the citizens think of the given conditions of the country, and what their future expectations are.

We expect people to consider that the total rate of those who consider themselves on the right side of the political spectrum (approximately 54 percent) surpasses those who describe themselves as democrats and/or leftists (28 percent) in Türkiye. It is also important to see that the ratio of nationalists became higher than conservatives among the right-wing political ranks. Despite being the majority and being favoured by political power, right-wing citizens, like left-wing citizens, have problems in terms of their quality of life and expectations, too.

To conclude, nearly two-thirds of the society lives with the feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. The authoritarian transformation that took place in the last two decades in Türkiye affected the well-being of citizens not only in terms of economic collapse but also in terms of political participation and social relations. Lastly, we can emphasise that a great deal of citizens (61 percent) started to address the government as responsible for this desolation. We hope this lets the winds of change blow in the next general elections. (AYG/VK)

¹The study "The Well-Being Conditions of The Citizens in Turkey: Towards a Healthy, Happy, Fair, Safe, Hopeful and Strong Society" was conducted on a sample of 1,000 people; breakdowns of age group, gender, geographical region and socio-economic status were included. The margin of error of the study was 3.10 per cent and the confidence interval was determined as 95 per cent.

Full text of the study (Turkish)

Executive summary of the study (English)