Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s emergency plan to prop up the battered Turkish lira and stop creeping dollarization has reversed the currency’s free fall for now, but the package of new measures offers no remedy to the loss of purchasing power plaguing Turkey’s wage-earners — from unskilled workers to white-collar professionals — amid soaring inflation.

The new plan, announced Dec. 20 shortly after the lira sank to an all-time low, aims to encourage retail lira deposits by offering a state guarantee to pay the differential should the lira’s decline against hard currencies exceed banks’ interest rates.

For Turkey’s import-reliant economy, the nosedive of the lira coupled with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has meant surging costs and thus sharp price increases. Unprecedented sights such as kilometer-long queues for subsidized bread, cooking oil sold by the cup and groceries installing anti-theft devices on baby formula, cheese and even toothpaste speak of how purchasing power has melted, sending millions of low-income people into deeper poverty. The currency turmoil, which sharply worsened in September as the Central Bank embarked on controversial rate cuts at Erdogan’s behest, has had a staggering impact on the middle class as well, stoking an already alarming brain drain.

Aylin Ates, a 51-year-old scholar of business administration at Ankara University, says her salary of up to 9,000 liras ($716) is now barely enough for her monthly expenses. “I’m fluent in two foreign languages. I graduated from good schools in Turkey and did academic research abroad. I have had articles published in prominent, peer-reviewed journals and co-authored books published internationally,” she told Al-Monitor. “But if you ask me what’s on my mind today, I would tell you it’s the money left in my pocket by the end of the month. I’ve been overdrafting my bank account to get by.” Ates had to abandon plans to replace her 15-year-old car. “I’m struggling to meet my basic needs now,” she said.