ANKARA: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s gamble on turning Turkey into a manufacturing power propelled by a cheap lira is being buffeted by a wave of industrial action as runaway prices consume wages.

       Thousands of workers at more than 60 companies ranging from textiles to transportation, mining and construction have joined mostly short-lived strikes in recent months.

       They are protesting a cost-of-living crisis that poses the biggest threat to the president’s policy tilt, and perhaps even to his two decades in power with elections due next year.

       Arzu Cerkezlioglu, president of the Turkey’s Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions, says workers have had enough. “An increase in the minimum wage was promoted as a strong raise, but it was washed away before people were paid,” she said.

       In the eyes of Erdogan, the lira’s weakness is the cost of turning Turkey into an industrial powerhouse and freeing the country from a dependence on short-term foreign cash, which flows into the economy when interest rates are high.

       But this grand vision isn’t playing out so neatly in the life of Sezer Aymelek.

       He works 12 hours a day delivering meals across Istanbul’s Besiktas district but can’t afford to properly heat the apartment he shares with his wife and two young children.

       So in February, the 29-year-old was on a chilly street striking for higher wages.

       “My gas bill more than doubled to over 1,000 liras (RM302) last month even though I keep the temperature at a minimum,” Aymelek said, describing the impact of the government’s increase in power tariffs in January, when annual consumer inflation soared to nearly 50%. “I have a baby, I have to keep the gas on.”

       Aymelek’s employer Yemeksepeti, Turkey’s biggest online food delivery company, has offered its couriers just over the new minimum wage of 4,250 liras (RM1,282) per month, but they wanted 5,500 liras (RM1,659) and better working conditions. Yemeksepeti declined to comment when contacted.

       The riders protested outside the firm’s headquarters on their pink-liveried motorcycles, chanting, blaring horns and hammering out a protest beat on the bike boxes that transport meals across the city.

       Labour-union confederation Turk-Is calculates a family of four needs 4,249 liras (RM1,282) per month to keep itself fed, and 13,843 liras (RM4,175) to stay above the poverty line.

       Price gains accelerated after the central bank, urged on by Erdogan who unorthodoxly blames high interest rates for fanning inflation, lowered borrowing costs four times starting in September, weakening the currency.

       Support for Erdogan’s AK Party has fallen, though many loyalists said they continued to have confidence in the president. A Metropoll study in February showed 72% of people unhappy with living conditions. Backing for the ruling party has fallen to 25%, its core level of support, said Ozer Sencar, head of the pollster, though that rises to 33% once undecided voters are distributed. — Bloomberg