This year's Feast of Sacrifice will be celebrated in Turkey and North Kurdistan because of signs of a deep financial crisis.

On the holiday, the sacrifice of Ibrahim (Abraham) is commemorated by the slaughter of an animal. The Feast of the Sacrifice is therefore also of great economic importance for the cattle breeders. But the galloping inflation in Turkey and North Kurdistan, the war and impoverishment in the Kurdish regions are putting the rural population in an increasingly difficult situation. This is clearly evident in Van Province, where animal husbandry is very badly hit by the crisis.

Last year, small cattle could be sold for between 2,000 and 3,000 TL and cattle for 10,000 to 20,000 TL at the feast of sacrifice. The prices have increased this year. Small livestock now cost between 5,000 and 6,000 TL and cattle between 50,000 and 70,000 TL. The increase is due to inflation on the one hand, but also to the massive increase in animal feed prices in this context, on the other. Due to military restricted areas, the cattle cannot be brought out onto the pastures and must be provided with feed.

"There is no purchasing power"

Cattle breeder Zeki Kara said: "People are unemployed and poor. How are they supposed to buy animals and slaughter them? In previous years the situation was better, but this year it is much worse. The price of a sheep has doubled or tripled compared to last year. A kilo of meat now costs 250 TL. There are too many poor people in our country. We tell people that a sheep costs 5,000 TL, but no one buys it. I've been doing this job for 21 years, but it's never been like this. This is a region characterized by livestock and agriculture. We have to feed the animals, but there is no profit like before."

"Everything has become extremely expensive"

Cattle breeder Mehmet Çaçur said: "Diesel is very expensive, the costs are very high. Now we can't even find a shepherd to take care of the animals. So people have to sell their animals. Now we sell small cattle in the market for 4,000 to 6,000 TL, but nobody buys them because people have no money."

"We can't sell animals"

Halil Çiçek, another cattle breeder, said: "There is no money on the market. People live in misery. We have the Feast of Sacrifice coming up. Some people buy sacrificial animals, but this time they are borrowing the money and cannot pay it back. I brought the animals here, but I have to take them back to the village if we don't sell them. They had closed the cattle market before under the pretext of foot-and-mouth disease. If they close it this time too, we will be in a very difficult situation. I buy animals from Erdiş, Muradiye, Gürpınar and other places and try to sell them here, but there is no one to buy them in this market."