There is a sociology of the economy too

Economics is of course a matter of expertise, but it is a field in which those with that expertise and those without it alike gallop freely. Specialists may rightly complain about this from their own standpoint, but the fact they overlook while complaining is that, however much it is a matter of expertise, all decisions taken and all policies directly affect everyone.

To expect people to leave a field that directly affects them solely to the specialists is to ask too much of technocrats. Anthony Giddens, one of the well-known sociologists, speaks, as a feature of the world we live in, of how people do not leave matters to experts, especially in matters with which everyone is connected and by which everyone is directly affected, such as economics, medicine and religion, so that everyone participates in discourse, debate and the production of knowledge. Giddens also conceptualizes this situation as the level of "reflexivity" of modern society.

A society living intertwined with economic developments never leaves the whole of its economic behavior to experts. Meanwhile, we always say that economics is not only economics, and economic analyses by economics experts often come to nothing because they do not sufficiently take into account how they are affected by the other fields to which economics is connected. They can see the matter as consisting solely of mathematical processes and build all their calculations and policy recommendations on that. Yet economics is, in the end, a matter concerning the human being and human behavior. And behavior is under every kind of material and spiritual influence, and in turn influences everything again.

I have great respect for expertise. In the part of economics that concerns mathematics and purely economic processes, I have never been pretentious, nor could I be. But economics, as a sociological institution, has a very close relationship with religion, family, education, politics, leisure habits and other patterns of behavior, and this makes economics a subject that cannot be left solely to economics experts.

The surprises we experience in the field of economics, which in fact require revising all economic theories anew, occur far too often to be exceptions. The reason is nothing other than the constant overlooking of the other factors acting on economics.

Looking at it purely in terms of economic data, in fact no objective reason can be found for the heavy exchange-rate pressure that Turkey has experienced recently. In an environment with an extremely dynamic economy, with exports and industrial production breaking records, the current account deficit also falling almost to a record, and new investments rapidly increasing, a reaction in the form of the exchange rate rising in response to interest rates falling can have no economic reason. The reason will of course be sought in non-economic factors, for example in politics in its broadest sense, in education, in religion, in social psychology.

The knowledge that no economy can withstand it if a loss of confidence is experienced, however strong the economic situation may be, is a cliché warning of sociological knowledge. This is why trust is regarded as the most important source of social capital. People's trusting one another, trusting the state or institutions, and considering the social benefit apart from their own individual interests constitute the depth of this capital and directly affect the economy.

On the contrary, the loss of this depth in social capital can bring every kind of cost for the whole society. Although individuals who act selfishly, thinking of their own interests, may hope for an individual gain, in the end it will lead to a loss for the whole society, themselves included. But where this awareness disappears, as negative values like greed turn into mass behavior, a disaster becomes inevitable.

Up until last Monday evening, the grounding of the distrust that had formed toward the Turkish lira in the rationale of lowering interest rates is something for which, from whatever angle you look at it, you cannot find any economic justification. Moreover, even in terms of the most basic economic science, interest is regarded as the enemy of production and development. By the most basic economics we of course mean the economics that is beneficial for society as a whole. Otherwise, for those who lend at interest and live off usury from the individual standpoint, this path is the most rational, the most profitable, the most lucrative, but also the most immoral. Because it is a path in which what is profitable for oneself brings nothing but disaster for the whole of society.

There was a political invitation, even incitement, to distrust of the Turkish lira, and those who answered this incitement invested in the dollar with very different motivations, without regard to the national or social benefit, looking only to their own gain, perhaps out of a rancor they inwardly harbored against the government, perhaps acting on a genuine instinct to protect what they have. While this investment, in mass form, led to the tragic fall of the Turkish lira, it created a significant cost for society. That it should be so was of course not as inevitable as a rule of mathematics. Indeed, there were also those who did not take part in this campaign at all.

There is a politics that invests in the economic disaster that distrust will cause, and on this occasion it was seen to work very badly.

But the psychology that will arise from the failure of those who trusted this cheap politics to obtain the economic gain they hoped for will inevitably produce a different energy.

It must be seen that the package announced by the President was, above all, a persuasive renewal of confidence for those who panicked in this process. The reaction of the masses already prepared to believe and trust Erdoğan took back, in a single night, a psychology that had accumulated over the dollar for several weeks.

Even this is regarded by some as a kind of "return to interest," and they try to justify their own pro-interest claims. The only thing we can remind such people is that, looked at from one angle, interest and trade too can ultimately be likened to each other.

Yet God has made trade lawful and interest unlawful, and there is an absolute difference between the two that those who mistake an alif for a rafter cannot see.