Al-Bab: Mohamed al-Debek, a schoolteacher in northern Syria, is on strike: a currency devaluation in neighboring Turkey has reduced the value of his salary by two-thirds.
His city of al-Bab, located in the northern region of war-torn Syria, has become a de facto Turkish protectorate in recent years.
Since the Turkish lira is now the region’s main currency, its recent nose dive has caused further pain for the people living there.
“My salary in 2017 was $160, but today it costs $50, which is a fraction of its value,” the 33-year-old said outside the washed-out yellow walls of his school.
“It’s barely enough to pay the rent.”
Not only does Ankara have military control over the border area, but most of the products and even mobile phone operators available in the markets are Turkish.
Regions in northern Syria, run by Turkish-backed opposition groups, replaced the largely devalued Syrian pound last year with the lira as the main currency.
The lira has lost 45 percent of its value against the dollar this year alone and the purchasing power of the debauch has waned, as has everyone else in the region.
“After the collapse of Lira, I was forced to look for another job after school,” he said.
His new afternoon job at a bookstore earns him another $40, but he still leaves them with less than the $200 he says he needs to make ends meet.
Turkey directly administers several districts in northern Syria and has invested heavily in education, health and other sectors, to seal its presence in the region.
The region’s economic fortunes are inextricably linked with Turkey’s and the lira’s sharp decline in recent weeks has thrown more trouble at an enclave whose residents are already stricken by war.
A recent United Nations report on the human condition estimated that “97 percent of the population, even those in employment, live in extreme poverty.”
Inflation is rising as fast as it is in neighboring Turkey, which has the lowest purchasing power and selling basic food items such as bread at record prices.
And when the price of a bag of flatbread stops rising, locals say, the amount of bread inside goes down.
Ahmed Abu Obeda, an official with the region’s Chamber of Commerce, which owns a company that imports food products from Turkey, acknowledged that consumption has declined.
“The demand for basic materials has gone down, and citizens in general cannot afford basic things like their daily needs in food, medicine and heating,” he said.
Hana al-Yasbu, a 36-year-old woman who was widowed in an airstrike five years ago and has since lived in a camp for war-displaced people, is one of them.
She typically earns about 20 Turkish lira a day by harvesting wheat and potatoes, enough to keep warm and feed her five children.
With her daily income now only one and a half dollars, Hana has to venture into the countryside to find firewood.
“I dreamed that I had about 50 lira a day to buy food to feed my kids, so they don’t go to bed hungry,” she said.
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