Being a top ten economy: are we dreaming?
14 November 2011
On a TV show recently, the program host was wandering through the streets of a rising Anatolian city, asking people how many weeks there were in a year. The majority of the respondents answered, “4 times 12, so 48 weeks,” while others took guesses like 8, 25 or 50. Even more upsetting was that some who tried to get to the answer by multiplying 4 and 12 failed to solve this simple multiplication problem and blurred out numbers like 46, 45, or 49. These were young university students. What got to me the most however, was that two young primary school teachers confidently responded “54 weeks.”
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How can fiberoptic cables reduce migration from the east to the west?
19 September 2011
I do not know about politics, but technology definitely has the power to make dreams come true. Let’s say that you are in Istanbul and you want to order kebab from the restaurant two blocks away. You pick up the phone and a young employee in Diyarbakır receives your order. The same person receives an order for sushi for a restaurant in Ankara and diverts the order to that restaurant. Maybe that employee also records the appointments made for a hospital in Arbil.
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It is time to devise a new policy for Turkey’s industrial zones
22 August 2011
Recently, the fiftieth anniversary of the Bursa Organized Industrial Zone (OIZ), Turkey's first OIZ, was celebrated. The fifty-year long adventure, which started with a World Bank loan in the process of the shift to a planned economy, played a major role in the industrial development of the country. Now, there is an OIZ in almost all provinces and everyone from industrialists to ordinary citizens knows where the OIZ of the province is located and what it looks like. The point about which we do not have an opinion is in which direction the function of OIZs in Turkey's economy should evolve. I believe that the answer to this question is closely related to the country's industrial policy and efforts to tackle the high current account deficit.
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How can Turkey be a model for the Arab countries?
21 June 2011
Last week I attended a meeting held by the Arab League General Secretariat in Cairo. Representatives from the Arab Union member countries discussed how Turkey could be a model for Arab countries that were going through process of renewal. My role in the meeting was to share Turkey's experience in the field of economic development. The best part of the meeting was the debate session. The quality of the questions on Turkey's economy asked during the meeting confirmed the curiosity and the interest of Arab countries about Turkey and their appetite for learning lessons from the Turkish experience.
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How should Istanbul grow: Via unearned rent or human capital?
02 May 2011
The cost of one-year study at Harvard University equals 70 percent of the per capita income in Boston. The cost of one-year study at Koç or Sabancı University is 160 percent the per capita income in Istanbul. It is very worrisome that the income disparity in Istanbul is much greater than that in the USA, where the said problem is quite a challenge. The gap widens further when you move down from high school to kindergarten.
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An assessment of the economic opening of CHP
25 April 2011
A period similar to the second half of April 2011 must be as rare as an eclipse for those concerned with Turkey's economic policies and growth problems. Turkey has started to discuss the future of economic policies intensely, maybe for the first time since after the end of the Cold War. As the year 2023 comes closer, the importance of the growth phenomenon occupies the election agenda to offset the inertia of the previous decades.
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Does the AKP’s Plan for 2023 ensure 8.48 percent annual growth?
19 April 2011
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) announced its election manifesto last Saturday. The ruling party, on the eve of the third general elections in which it will take part, aims to increase the GDP to US$ 1 trillion by 2015 and to US$ 2 trillion by 2023. A simple calculation suggests that to achieve this target, an annual growth at 8.48 percent must be attained until 2023. In other words, it assumes that Turkey's growth rate until 2023 will double the historical 4 percent growth average attained in the last three decades. This was exactly an assertion I wanted to see on Turkey's agenda.
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In which direction will Turkey grow?
11 April 2011
Turkey's economy grew by 8.9 percent in 2010. This is really impressive. If the growth rate is sustained at this level until 2023, the national income will reach US$ 2.2 trillion and Turkey will become the 10th largest economy of the world. If this performance can be maintained, in fifty years, a child born in 2011 will be 46 times richer than his/her grandfather was.
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Turkey needs a new policy on Palestine
16 February 2011
We are going through a period in which the Middle East is being thrown off-balance. Regimes either have changed or are being shaken in Arab countries. Turkey is following these developments closely as due to the intensified integration with the Middle Eastern economy in the recent period, the developments in the region concern its economic policy as well as foreign policy.
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On the Spread of Industry and Expressways in Anatolia...
20 December 2010
Since the ban on smoking in closed areas, the event that has excited me most was the groundbreaking ceremony of the Izmir-Izmit expressway. I wish we could see such assertive infrastructure projects more often on the country's agenda. Turkey's shell will change, it will become a high-income country in parallel with the spread of expressway networks throughout the country. The spread of expressways can be understood in a way similar to how the spread of movie theatres in Anatolia has the potential to improve the quality of life and reinforce competitiveness.
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