Budget as a Moral Document: Whose Side Are the Choices On?

By Ömer Gencal, DUNYA Gazette

As Türkiye approaches 2026, official economic projections, foreign investor reports, and narratives of “rebalancing” dominate the public debate. Markets search for direction in the cold arithmetic of balance sheets and exchange rates. Yet step outside—listen to the dense, silent crowds at metrobus stops—and a deeper collapse becomes audible, one that no spreadsheet can measure.

This is not merely a story of declining purchasing power. It reflects a deeper condition—what psychiatrist Viktor Frankl once diagnosed in the darkest circumstances of Auschwitz as a crisis of meaning—now resurfacing across Türkiye’s streets.

Author Omer Gencal

Enduring the “How” Requires a “Why”

In his seminal work, Frankl drew on Nietzsche’s insight: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

Turkish society has endured many difficult “hows” throughout its history. But when a young person in their twenties comes to believe that hard work, productivity, and honesty will not allow them to move up—or even hold their ground—the issue extends beyond economics. It becomes a crisis of meaning.

This sentiment is supported by data:

• According to the OECD’s Real Wage Tracker, real incomes in Türkiye have declined sharply over the past three years.

• OECD mobility data show that it takes nearly five generations for a child from a low-income family in Türkiye to reach the middle-income level, compared with four generations on average across the OECD.

For young people, the belief that effort can change their future no longer finds even statistical backing. When a system removes their sense of “why,” hardship ceases to be a sacrifice and becomes mere suffering.

The Budget as a Moral Document

The most powerful driver of this loss of meaning lies in what can be described as a “finite game” mindset—one in which economic actors consciously allocate resources away from youth and toward preserving existing capital structures. The clearest evidence of this approach is found in the 2026 central government budget, which should function as a moral document.

The budget’s priorities suggest that resources are directed not toward building the future, but toward protecting capital and rent-seeking structures.

The numbers are telling:

• Corporate tax exemptions alone amount to TRY 768 billion in the 2026 budget.

• When VAT and special consumption tax exemptions are included, total forgone tax revenue in favor of capital reaches approximately TRY 1.9 trillion.

While the state relinquishes this revenue without demanding measurable performance in return, it claims an inability to finance investments in young people’s futures. This is not a scarcity problem—it is a matter of choice.

The Education Budget Illusion

A common defense is frequently raised: “Education receives the second-largest allocation—around TRY 2.1 trillion.”

This argument relies on a numerical illusion. While the figure is large, the overwhelming share of this allocation goes to personnel expenses, essentially wage payments. It is not a budget designed to improve educational quality, modernize curricula, or directly support students.

What matters is not the size of a budget, but how it is spent. If such a large allocation cannot ensure:

• clean drinking water in schools,

• at least one nutritious daily meal for children and adolescents,

• or solutions to the chronic housing and dormitory crisis facing university students,

then its headline size is largely meaningless. An education system that pays salaries but fails to keep students fed, hydrated, or housed cannot claim success. In such cases, large figures remain little more than statistics.

From Anti-Interest Rhetoric to a TRY 2.7 Trillion Interest Burden

While funding cannot be found for educational quality or student nutrition, the same budget proves remarkably generous when it comes to interest payments.

Despite years of rhetoric centered on “fighting interest,” the largest sinkhole in the 2026 budget is once again debt servicing. Interest payments alone total TRY 2.7 trillion.

This represents one of the largest wealth transfers in the country’s history—resources taken from households and future generations and redirected toward capital holders. In a system that hesitates to provide a single meal to a student, young people are nevertheless expected to shoulder the long-term burden of this interest bill.

Monetary Policy Alone Is Not Enough

This structural imbalance cannot be corrected merely by adjusting interest rates. As long as TRY 1.9 trillion in tax exemptions, TRY 2.7 trillion in interest payments, and an education budget hollowed out in substance coexist, the erosion of hope among younger generations will persist.

A holistic policy response is required:

• The Ministry of Youth and Sports should focus not only on physical infrastructure, but on sustained programs that foster discipline, ethics, and continuity.

• The Ministry of National Education must allocate resources beyond payrolls, prioritizing clean water, nutrition, educational quality, and even parental education.

• Family and Social Services should protect households not through ad-hoc assistance, but through fair and systemic income distribution.

An Invitation to the “Infinite Game”

The year 2026 represents a critical juncture for Türkiye. The country faces a choice: continue the “finite game” of tax amnesties, interest-driven rents, speculative trading, market manipulation, and hollow education statistics—or shift to an “infinite game” that invests in people, child nutrition, and educational quality.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt once observed, “We may not always be able to build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.”

Today, that task is clear: not to construct impressive figures, but to build a generation. In a society that has lost its sense of meaning, even the brightest budget numbers resemble nothing more than the glitter of a luxury cabin aboard a sinking ship.

Author: Ömer Gencal