ANKARA, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- The publishing sector in Turkey is going through a difficult period due to the rapid depreciation of the Turkish lira, as Turkish publishers are heavily dependent on imported paper.
Newspapers are being closed or forced to decrease their pages, magazines have reduced their size, and publishing houses raise the price of books as paper is becoming unaffordable for many.
Most recently, the country's official gazette, which has been publishing laws, directives and legislations adopted by state organs for the past 98 years, stopped printing in October and shifted to online version because of sharp hike in paper prices.
Two national mainstream newspapers, daily HaberTurk and daily Vatan, also stopped their print version and went online in the past four months.
"The cost of publishing newspaper has become unbearable at a time when advertisements are mainly channeled into digital media outlets and broadcasters," Mehmet Kenan Tekdag, chairman of the board of directors for HaberTurk, reportedly told employees in a message.
Turkey's leading daily Hurriyet has reduced its number of pages to 16 from 20, while some local newspapers decided not to go into print on Sundays. Some newspapers, such as daily Aydinlik, were not printed for a few days because of the lack of paper supplies.
Turkey's economy faces serious difficulties in 2018 and the Turkish lira hit record lows in August when the United States imposed sanctions over a detained American pastor.
The two NATO allies also imposed tariffs on each other's goods, worsening a crisis for Turkey's currency, which has lost about one third of its value against the U.S. dollar since January.
Turkey's annual pulp in need is nearly 650,000 tons, but only 250,000 tons are produced in the country. Turkey's annual paper demand in general is above 5 million tons.
The publishing sector in Turkey used to import paper, mostly from China. But after China's decision to become an importer of paper, Turkey's paper importers face great difficulty, said Orhan Ozturk, president of Istanbul Chamber of Printing Houses.
Main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) lawmaker Ilhami Ozcan Aygun submitted a motion to the parliament for seeking a solution to the problem.
The lawmaker stressed that the main problem is that the industry is too dependent on the imported paper following the privatization and subsequent closure of the Turkish Cellulose and Paper Mills (SEKA) in 2004, which has made the sector significantly vulnerable to the exchange rate.
The shortage of paper supplies have forced 300 local newspapers and 11 publishing houses to close this year, Aygun said.
Turkey Printers' Federation Chairman Ahmet Huseyin Gurbuz also said many enterprises in the sector faced the risk of closure.
So the government should not collect customs duty on cardboard and paper imports, stop imposing VAT on paper and cardboard products for a temporary period, and the debts of enterprises in the sector should be postponed, he added.
In September, the Turkish Journalists' Association convened a meeting attended by 20 chief editors of media outlets, mostly from mainstream, to discuss ways to deal with the paper crisis. The association submitted a report on the problem with their potential solutions to the presidency.
The number of journalists who have lost jobs in the past decade has exceeded 10,000 because of media outlets closure caused by a significant increase in paper prices, said the report.
It proposed that Turkey should produce its own pulp domestically, while the Press and Advertisement Agency that is responsible for supporting the newspapers financially should increase the price tag on ads on the newspapers, and the agency, along with state banks, should provide interest-free loans, lifting the VAT for newspapers, and delaying tax payment for the industry.
For now, the issue has caused some government attention. On Nov. 12, Turkish Minister of Industry and Technology Mustafa Varank announced that the SEKA paper mills in Balikesir Province will resume production in 2019 with a capacity of 300,000 tons.
