After years of inflation crisis, new pain from rate hikes
Policy showing successes but deepening poverty for some
Retirees, workers mourn diminished living standards
Test of Erdogan39;s popularity and patience with programme

ISTANBUL, July 18 Reuters Many Turks feel anxious and ashamed about their eroding living standards, paying the price for President Tayyip Erdogan39;s past economic missteps even as there are signs that the country is beginning to exit its costofliving crisis.

Six years of punishing inflation, combined with a sharp clampdown on credit over the last year, has given retirees and salaried workers a chilling brush with poverty, data shows, testing Turkey39;s social fabric more than at any other time during Erdogan39;s more than two decade rule.

Turks say they are now slipping cash to retired parents and grandparents, in a reversal of Turkish custom, even as they themselves struggle to pay monthly bills and forgo modest luxuries such as restaurants.

Erdogan has urged patience but 2024 is emerging as the most trying in a generation for Turks, whose economic fortunes have rapidly deteriorated since the first in a series of currency crashes in 2018.

I may still be walking, but I am not really living, said Fettah Deniz, 73, whose monthly pension of 13,000 lira 393 is three times below the designated poverty line of a person in his situation, so his children help him out.

At holiday gatherings he has even avoided his grandchild because he had no…