Feature: Turkish parents struggling with back-to-school costs amid currency crisis
Xinhua
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A woman is asking the price of children clothes in a market in Istanbul on September 4, 2018. (Photo: Xinhua)

September has become the most expensive and busiest month of the year for most of Turks as the new academic year begins amid a lingering currency crisis.

While millions of students are preparing to fill the classes, parents are hunting for the best bargains for school stationery and clothing.

The turbulent economic situation facing the country, marked by a rapid depreciation of the Turkish currency lira, is upsetting families a great deal.

The lira has lost over 40 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar since the beginning of this year, while the annual inflation rate has soared beyond expectations in the last two months. The consumer prices index surged nearly 18 percent in August, hitting its highest since 2004.

Recep Usta, a father of two, runs a small shop in Istanbul's busiest Eminonu neighborhood. He sells school clothing at affordable prices compared with most of the other shops in the city.

"I'm afraid the surge in prices is well over the inflation rate," Usta told Xinhua. "The higher the dollar gets, the higher the prices."

Usta had to mark the prices up by over 30 percent, contrary to a five-percent increase over the previous year.

"Last year, the price of standard short-sleeve t-shirts was 15 liras, but this season they are 20," he said.

For a complete set, which includes a t-shirt, a pair of pants, sportswear, shoes and sneaker, parents have to buy at least eight items and they are quite expensive, noted the shop owner.

Melehat Uygul, a mother of five, said she is having a hard time as she has to fulfill her kids' needs due to soaring prices. She earns a minimum wage of 1,600 liras, or 240 dollars a month, as a janitor at a government institution.

"The cost of school clothing for a single child is over 600 liras and I have five. You do the math," she sighed. "I am trying to look for the cheapest deals across the entire city."

The prices of basic school supplies, meanwhile, have risen by more than 40 percent as raw material costs increased.

"The cost of paper products has skyrocketed," said Mahmut Ozgur, a stationery supplier in the Tahtakale neighborhood.

He spoke of a 20-percent increase in the prices of notebooks at wholesale and a rise of up to 50 percent in retail shops.

Nurullah Dal, president of the Private Schools Association, was quoted by local media as saying that the cost of the average school supplies this year is at least 2,000 liras, or 300 dollars, up from 1,500 liras in 2017.

Vecdet Sendil, president of a stationery association, said basic stationery expenses do not exceed 600 liras, or 90 dollars. "It is the imported books which make the prices soar," he was quoted as saying by the online news portal haberler.com.

As the currency crisis lingers due to a number of factors, including festering disputes between Turkey and the United States over an array of issues, tuition fees for private schools have also increased by 10 to 15 percent year-on-year.

In Istanbul, the annual fees of private schools generally vary between 14,000 and 60,000 liras, with several exceptions like Robert College, which is specialized in providing American-style education. Its cost goes up to 100,000 liras.

The expenditure for parents is not limited to the tuition fees and school supplies as they also have to consider food and transportation costs, which adds another 5,000 to 10,000 liras to their annual spending.

Families paying the education fees in foreign currencies are growing more worried in particular as the currency fluctuations are continuing despite the government's efforts to buck the trend.

Burak Coskun, a journalist, is sending his daughter to Charles de Gaulle, a French school in Ankara.

"The school administration made a 25-percent discount for the first time in its entire history this year, as they started to lose their students quickly due to the rapid value loss of the Turkish lira," he told Xinhua.

"But the real problem is we don't know what will be the exchange rate for the next semester," he added. Enditem