Students struggle to afford rent as inflation surges

As surging inflation pushes up the cost of living in Turkey, law student Candeniz Aksu says he hasn’t been able to afford his housing rent for the past two months, write Dilara Senkaya and Canan Sevgili for Reuters.

“The natural gas has been cut off and they’ll take the meter away in a couple of days because we have large debts,” said Aksu (23), who is studying at the University of Kocaeli and lives in Istanbul with another student.

With higher education students in Turkey returning to regular studies after a long period of distance learning due to the coronavirus pandemic, many are increasingly dependent on support from parents and income from part-time jobs to get by. Their struggles are part of a broader erosion of living standards driven by inflation and high unemployment, which has sharply cut support for President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party ahead of elections set for 2023.
Full report on the Reuters site