TURKEY SHOULD SUBSIDISE POOR SE REGION – REPORT

Reuters, UK
Nov 22 2006

ANKARA, Nov 22 (Reuters) – Turkey should pay a monthly subsidy to
around five million poverty-stricken people in its mainly Kurdish
eastern regions to help kickstart the local economy, said a U.N.-backed
report unveiled on Wednesday.

Incomes in eastern Turkey are about one third of the national average
and as little as 7 percent of the average income in the European Union,
which Turkey hopes to join.

Ankara must at least double the east’s income before it can join the
EU, the report said, echoing concerns about regional income disparity
in Turkey made by the European Commission.

"About 60 percent of the population in the region lives under the
poverty threshold and that poverty has acquired a chronic character
as it is passed on to successive generations," said the report.

It said public investment in these regions remained at about one
third of the national average.

The report suggests a subsidy of 150 Turkish lira to each family that
qualifies and puts the total cost at 771 million lira ($572 million).

The average family in the east has five children.

The region’s economy has suffered from more than two decades of
conflict between security forces and separatist Kurdish guerrillas
that uprooted thousands of people and created ghettos of unemployed
migrants in the region’s cities.

The proposed "citizenship income" and other measures such as free
lunches for students would help boost employment and develop the
regional market, allowing a gradual revival of local entrepreneurship,
the report suggested.

Turkey is required to close the wide gap between its western and
eastern regions under its obligations to the EU, with which it began
accession talks last year. The gap is wider in Turkey than in any
other candidate or member state.

The report also called for public investment in tourism to attract
more visitors from Iran, Georgia and Armenia and also ethnic Armenians
living abroad.
From: Baghdasarian