2016 in review: why Turkey’s annus horribilis could be just the start

With terrorism on the rise, a spiralling economy and a president tightening his grip on dissent, Turkey's annus horribilis is set to continue well into 2017.

People gather to celebrate in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, in July, after the failed military coup in which 290 people died. Kursat Bayhan / Getty Images.

Tucked inside the Egyptian wing of Istanbul’s fabled Spice Bazaar, Pandeli restaurant was a dining institution that, since 1901, could call on Queen Elizabeth II, Audrey Hepburn and other famous names among its customers. But two months ago, its doors closed for good.

“These economic problems in Turkey are because of one man,” says Mesut Adik, the third-generation owner of another renowned restaurant, Zumrut Bufe, a neighbour of Pandeli. “But I won’t tell you his name because the police will come.”

Adik says that in the past, a good day of business – always a Saturday – could see him serve as many as 1,000 people. “Today, I’m earning less than in the 1980s; my business is down 50 per cent on two years ago,” he says.

Turkey has come through one of its most troubling years in decades. Istanbul alone has suffered five major terrorist attacks, targeting tourists and locals alike, including an ISIL assault on Ataturk Airport in June that killed 45 people.

In the predominantly Kurdish southeast, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced by the return of conflict with Kurdish separatists that precipitated Turkey’s ground invasion of northern Syria in August. In return, a new generation of Kurdish suicide bombers brought their war, confined to the countryside for decades, into the heart of Turkey’s major cities. As recently as December 10, 44 people were killed by Kurdish militants in central Istanbul, their blood flowing down the hill into the waters of the Bosphorus Strait.A failed attempt at a military coup in July and the nationwide purge of enemies of the state, both real and imagined, that followed has gutted the state sectors.

For the president, who opened his latest billion-dollar infrastructure project – a 5.4-km highway under Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait – as recently as December 20, his core supporters were invigorated by the military’s actions.

As the coup unfolded, Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked for people to come into the streets to protect Turkey’s democractatic foundations, and across the country Turks answered in their thousands with dozens giving up their lives. The failed coup – blamed on blamed on the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen who is now sought for extradition by Erdogan – precipitated an ongoing state of emergency that has placed all levers of power in Erdogan’s hands. With the majority of leading opposition voices now silenced through imprisonment or closure, including record numbers of journalists, few see the president’s grip on Turkey reliquinishing any time soon.

Once a leading light in a region devoid of democratic political Islam, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has overseen the remarkable rise and now, fall, of Turkey. His bombastic comments have alienated western-minded and Kurdish Turks from the state, and Turkey from Europe.

The government has resorted to calling for the country to unite under the leadership of president Erdogan via text message, even as the government ignores, and fuels, attacks on Kurdish and opposition groups that, in turn, has driven foreign investment away.

Such instability has begun to take a toll on the economy. Turkey is now the world’s worst-performing emerging economy, with the lira losing one-fifth of its value against the US dollar this year alone. A suicide attack that killed 12 Germans and a Peruvian tourist in January was followed by another on Istanbul’s Istiklal in March that, together with the airport attack, effectively finished the tourist industry for 2016.

With Erdogan’s determination to introduce a presidential system, stability is unlikely to improve soon.

Some economists believe the country's high demographic growth rate may help to spur spending. Yet with bombs exploding on a regular basis, and Turkey in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, just how long domestic spending reliant on credit can keep the country above water is up for question. As restaurant owner Adik says, bleakly: "The situation is only going to get worse."

Stephen Starr is a journalist who has lived in Syria and Turkey since 2007.