We will give the pastor and get price rises

Some dance the halay, some set themselves alight, some pin them on their kids and some trample on them.

They are protesting in their own way.

Some are engaging in the dollar prayer as if praying for rain in the hope that it will fall.

This is the people’s method for combatting the rising exchange rate or, more correctly, the devaluating Turkish lira.

The most empowered official, i.e. the sole one, tells us to exchange our dollars and euros. Photographs and footage of those who do so adorn the pro-regime media in reams. Curiously, people are making a grab for foreign exchange and gold in certain provinces – and those provinces are provinces in which the AKP got the highest vote. For sure, such images find no inclusion among the pro-regimists.

Some people have also started to dream of dollars. And heading the list of the most googled questions from Turkey is, “What does it mean to dream of dollars?”

I am not sure if this is abnormal in days in which we go to bed and rise with the dollar.

There is an attempt to come out and make everything down to Pastor Brunson. Once the presidential elections attemptedly fobbed off as being the presidential system of governance had been turned into snap elections, opposition circles spoke of a crisis in the offing. But, this has no importance. What counts in the end is the realm of the AKP’s perception management operation.

And this is how it transpired.

The powerful, who turn every crisis into an opportunity, employed the self-same method. Nor did the opposition surprise either themselves or, unfortunately, us.

Those trying to come out with the truth were threatened with investigation by none less than Istanbul Republic Chief Prosecution.

As I said, the same old story.

Phones originating from the US began to be smashed as Erdoğan called for a boycott.

In fact, from certain footage doing the rounds on social media, some people were firing bullets at their iPhone and some hitting them with sledgehammers.

Some made posts on second-hand sites saying, “I am putting my iPhone up for sale to comply with the Chieftain’s boycott decision.”

However, a regime supporter even said, “The iPhone boycott means don’t buy one from this time on. Not smashing the one you’ve got and damaging national wealth.” Most probably, the chap’s words were a reflex to protect state big-wigs who use the phones that are to be boycotted.

Let us see what those state big-wigs do with their iPhones. Will they smash them or put them up for sale on second-hand sites on the internet in protest?

As is known, certain people are doing this.

We are for sure a society that is accustomed to the eclipse of reason, but this much takes the cake. A chap is getting rid of his US-made phone because he is protesting. He is selling it for cash. Having sold it, he will probably if nothing else accuse the buyer of that phone of treason.

For using US goods that he is protesting against and not using.

Indeed, the first pointer to this was given in pool writer Mehmet Barlas’s column yesterday.

“If things carry on like this, for example, only FETOists will use iPhones.”

The US’s sanctions and Turkey’s countersanctions. I mean, do you imagine them to be extra tariffs imposed on imports having no reflection on prices.

It will not be long before price increases on electricity and natural gas spread to everything including the kitchen sink. The price of everything in your kitchen will rocket. If you do not believe it, take a glance at the US products to which the tariffs announced yesterday will apply. Nothing is missing.

Where will it all end?

Pastor Brunson will certainly be released and we will be left to face price rises whose implementing is made to seem normal in this process.

Yes, the price rises will not be reversed after Brunson has been released.

The dollar may stop somewhere but things economically will stand as before. The US will be made to appear responsible for the price rises that were made.

The AKP will continue to fob off a Pyrrhic victory as if it were a true victory.

What was it presidential spokesman İbrahim Kalın said yesterday:

“Turkey is about to turn the crisis into opportunity.”