The average Turk spends around 30 percent of his or her income on food, compared to 15 percent for the average French person.

Would you like a tax system that loves you more than you love yourself, interferes in every single aspect of your life, saves you from doing bad things, and promotes good behavior? Say that the state, assuming that high-glycemic index food and beverages are detrimental to people’s health, raises taxes on such products. This would push up the prices of the high-glycemic index foods and beverages, discourage their consumption, and hence protect people from obesity. This also would mean the state regarding you as a baby, knowing what you need better then you do. It thus interferes with your lifestyle, just for your own good, of course. Would you love such a paternalist state? The other day, finance minister Mehmet Şimşek brainstormed on such option. He mentioned the possibility of imposing special differentiated consumption tax rates on certain goods to prevent obesity. He also talked about the possibility of extending differentiated taxation on a broader scale to change consumption patterns overall. I am not sure if such a paternalistic tax system would be functional. I think the idea is rather odd. See what I think.

Taxes on tobacco products have at the same time worked as an incentive for the smuggling of cigarettes, don’t you think? Taxes on cigarettes were cut during Turgut Özal’s time, but now they have risen back again. People familiar with the issue say that smuggling has become a billion-dollar sector. I read this in Erdal Sağlam’s commentary in Hürriyet.

I personally don’t like guardian taxes that protect me from myself. But as we are talking about food prices, let me share an issue that I have been thinking lately. According to OECD statistics, the average Turk spends around 30 percent of his or her income on food, compared to 15 percent for the average French person. The differentiation of tax rates will essentially discourage the consumption of a certain good by increasing its share in the total spending on food. Consumers will give up consuming that particular good as they can no longer afford it. In that case, will Turkish people be less obese than French people? Food is already relatively expensive in Turkey, you know. The guardian tax perspective recommends that we eat less. Then, why are there no books telling about how skinny Turkish women are? I know there are some about French women. What do you say? The functionality of guardian taxes is highly controversial.

But one thing is not debated: food prices are high in Turkey. Compared to the EU average, milk prices are 30 percent higher and milk consumption is 40 percent lower, for instance. The same applies for red meat. Similarly, grain prices in Turkey are 40 percent higher than the world average. Another striking variable: price volatilities are lower than the world in Turkey both for wheat and corn, because the Soil Products Office limits price volatilities to secure a stable income for farmers. As a result, the average Turk spends 30 percent of his or her budget on food, as of 2012, compared to 8 percent for the average American. Turkey’s agricultural policy is distorted.

In the 1950s, the rural population was higher and politics were more of a rural issue. Today, the share of the urban population is 75 percent. But the agricultural policy is still living in the 1950s. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that we should forget about the rural population. I am just saying that there are better ways to support the rural economy. Turkey’s agricultural policy supports the rural population through the labor of the urban population. It tries to secure stable incomes for the former by raising agricultural prices for the entire population. It is like forcing the urban poor to finance the rural poor. Not nice. This is what I am trying to say.

Turkey has to urbanize its agricultural policy. First, reduce staple food prices. We can decide what to eat or not for ourselves.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 05.11.2013