Turks in the past week have been reflecting on some disturbing news: fully one half of families in the country have no children. The fertility rate has dropped to 1.48 children per woman. The population replacement rate is 2.1.

Turkey’s leader of 23 years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took one look at the sobering figure and said, “Demographic disaster”.

He took another look and said, “Existential threat”.

And he took another look, got up on stage at a Family and Culture/Arts Symposium in Ankara, and declared that stronger measures are needed to safeguard the institution of family, saying: “We are taking measures against gender-neutrality impositions and LGBT movements, allowing no concessions or complacency.”

Turkey, he added, was protecting the family in an era when global capitalism is opening up new fronts, with cultural imperialism and digital encirclement intensifying worldwide.

That’s right, Erdogan was blaming everything under the sun for Turkey’s population woe, except the very thing that most stares everybody in the face: the ruins of the Turkish economy after more than two decades of Erdogan’s ruinous economics – and ruinous politics that have created a polarised nation of haves and have-nots, largely have-nots.

If only your own constituency could have enough babies Mr Erdogan. As things stand, all too many impoverished Turks opt against starting or adding to a family for fear of having too many mouths to feed. It’s that simple.

Remember the early days of 2018 when Turkish households were groaning at the lira hitting four to the dollar? This past week they were paying out 42 per USD. Remember October 2017 when consumers were complaining that official inflation had reached 11.9%, the highest rate since July 2008? Five years later, the headline rate stood at 86%. Panicked officials finally got the great man’s permission to curb “Erdoganomics” and, by last month, the rate was down to the still perilously high 33% (though few in Turkey believe the official inflation data and, given the stark politicising of Turkey’s institutions, with good cause).

As reported just last week, Turkey is the country with the highest number of minimum wage earners in Europe, some 11.2mn people among its population of around 87mn. By October, when the poverty threshold for a family of four rose to TRY 92,547 ($2,180), the wage accounted for just 23.9% of that figure.

Dear Mr Erdogan. You want answers? Take a look in the mirror. A leader who murders his country’s economy, who generates a neverending cost-of-living crisis, can hardly expect most Turks to be determined to deliver more children into the turmoil.