Will Turkey Adopt Islamic Work Week?
Michael Rubin / Jan. 10, 2016
Turkey
When Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) first took power in 2002, they did so against the backdrop of a banking and financial crisis. In one day, the Turkish currency had lost 35 percent of its value, taking a bite out of almost every Turk’s bank account and purchasing power. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was wise: He focused his party’s efforts on popular measures to stabilize and repair the economy, rather than pursue some of the Islamist social agenda that his detractors feared. To a large degree, he succeeded. In the five years before the AKP assumed power, Turkey’s currency devalued from around 200,000 lira to just over 1.7 million lira against the dollar while in the first two years of AKP government, the Turkish currency actually strengthened to 1.5 million lira to the dollar. Whereas today Erdoğan has launched a jihad against cigarettes, back in the day Turkish radio broadcast stories about Erdoğan’s efforts to lower cigarette taxes.
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