Photo: Collected
The enticing smell of grilled corn and chestnuts wafted from Hakan Deniz's red and gold food cart near a mosque in Istanbul's old city. But local customers are hard to come by these days.
With Turkey mired in sky-high inflation, Istanbul's ubiquitous street vendors, who have been part of the cityscape since the Ottoman Empire, are worried about their future.
"Our tomorrows are uncertain," said Deniz, 18, after pushing his cart past the Rustem Pasha mosque.
"I have lost almost half of my customers because of inflation," Deniz said as he weighed and handed a bag of chestnuts to an American tourist.
He wondered aloud if vendors like him would "still exist in the future".
Inflation rose across the world after the Covid pandemic and soared further after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, but it has been particularly bad in Turkey.
Officially, it rocketed to 85 percent in October 2022 before slowing and rising again to reach 75 percent in May this year. Inflation has since fallen, with data on Tuesday showing it at 52 percent in August.
Messenger/Disha
