Daily Times

In a dusty business park in Konya, Turkey’s conservative industrial heartland, Ahmet Hakan Umit sells imported machine tools that are quickly becoming too expensive for his customers.

Sales are down as much as 30 percent this year as a deep dive in the lira currency has pushed up the cost of the computerised lathes he imports from Asia.

“I’m scared. Even one deal falling through can mean a huge setback,” the 25-year-old finance director of Umit Makina said looking out on a showroom filled with Samsung machine tools costing as much as $350,000 each.

President Tayyip Erdogan’s comments that he wanted greater control of monetary policy after Sunday’s elections sparked the lira’s latest sell-off, forcing the central bank to hike rates aggressively.

But the currency’s 20-percent slide and higher interest rates don’t appear to have eroded the support in Konya for Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party, thanks to religious loyalty and a newfound prosperity over the party’s 16-year rule.

Umit doesn’t plan to vote for the AKP in the parliamentary and presidential vote, but he expects it to win.

“Many firms are unhappy right now, but people will keep voting for the same government.”

Known as one of Turkey’s most pious places, Konya has been a bulwark of support for the AKP: nearly 75 percent of the city’s votes in 2015 parliamentary elections went to the ruling party.

The city of 2 million has more recently become a symbol of what can be achieved in the long-neglected central Anatolian heartland, boosted by the AKP’s 47 billion lira ($10 billion) of investments including roads, hospitals and industrial zones.

Under Erdogan, Konya and neighbouring cities have become known as “Anatolian tigers” for their fast growth and entrepreneurial zeal.

They are also home to a new class of conservative industrialists who, like Erdogan, see themselves as at odds with the secular establishment that dominated society and business for decades and shut out the religious Turks who form the backbone of AKP support.

The most popular, and divisive, politician in modern Turkish history, Erdogan has more recently overseen a widening crackdown against opponents, further unnerving global investors.

‘See Turkey’

Erdogan gazes back from nearly every billboard in Konya, and sometimes buildings and minibus taxis.

“Look at Konya, See Turkey,” reads one banner draped from an office building. There is a high-speed train, a tram, shopping centres and high-rise residential buildings. Fatma, who didn’t give her last name, is sales manager at a company selling bathroom fixtures. Surrounded by PVC pipes and brass fittings, she rattles off the changes in her more than 15 years at the company.

Published in Daily Times, June 22^nd 2018.