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From Our Own Correspondent

Turkey's Cost of Living CrisisTurkey's Cost of Living Crisis

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News Commentary, News

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What is it like to spend years saving up your money, and then watch as its value rapidly declines? Or to have a pension which no longer pays for even your basic needs? Inflation in Turkey is soaring, with some estimates putting the annual rate at fifty percent. The Covid pandemic has meant that prices are rising around the world, but Turkey's particularly high figure has led some to blame the unorthodox economic policies of the country’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ayla Jean Yackley visited an Istanbul market to hear more.

When our correspondent in Colombia contracted Covid, he assumed he would get the medical treatment he needed; after all, he did have health insurance. However, that was not how it turned out, and in the process, Matthew Charles got a first-hand picture of how things work in the Colombian healthcare system: who gets the help they need, and why it is they who get it.

Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen, has a problem with street prostitution, in the sense that prostitutes and clients sometimes have sex actually in the street, or else they end up going back to the client's homes, where the women may not be safe. As a way of tackling this, the city’s sex workers are now being offered a new place to see their clients: in the back of a van. Linda Pressly was invited to see how this works.

Conspiracy theorists are hard to argue with, as any fact offered to challenge their world view can be dismissed as a lie of the mainstream media. So when Stephanie Hegarty travelled to the US to meet adherents of the “QAnon” theory, she did not expect to change their minds. These are people who believe there is an international, underground sex ring, linked to senior world leaders with a secret fondness for worshipping the devil. However, she was surprised at the details of QAnon beliefs, and the tenacity with which supporters cling to them.

We are all probably aware of the lasting effect that children’s books can have. Stories discovered in our early years may stay with us for the rest of our lives, so too the pictures and plots. Our Paris Correspondent, Hugh Schofield has long held a candle for Caroline, the bold little girl who featured in a long-running series of French children's books dating back to the 1950s. So it was a great surprise when he had the chance to actually meet her.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts

0:04.9

Today, shopping, worried about prices, try it in Istanbul, as inflation in Turkey leaves

0:11.9

the cost of basic goods out of reach for many.

0:15.7

Meanwhile our correspondent in Colombia ended up in hospital with Covid.

0:20.3

He lived to tell the tale, but it's one that sheds a grim light on the country's healthcare

0:25.4

system.

0:26.4

We hear about an unusual setting for sex workers in Denmark to see their clients.

0:32.1

Then about people in the US who detect secret signs everywhere of the international

0:38.1

satanic pedophile ring, which apparently operates right under our noses.

0:44.4

And how two contrasting French views about the role of women have been fighting it out

0:49.4

in our Paris correspondent's favourite children's books.

0:53.4

First, what's it like to spend years saving your money and then watching as its value

0:59.6

rapidly declines, or to have a pension which no longer pays for even your basic needs,

1:06.0

let alone anything else?

1:08.1

Inflation is a problem in many countries right now.

1:11.6

The rate crept over 5% in the UK this week.

1:15.9

But in Turkey, something the rate is now 50% and still rising.

1:21.6

Covid is of course part of the reason.

1:24.0

The pandemic has interfered with the making and transporting of goods, so with fewer of

1:29.4

them around, the price goes up.

1:32.0

But Turkey's particularly high rate has led many to blame the country's president Erdogan,

1:38.0

who has an unorthodox approach to economics.

...

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