The problem with Cyprus is that it takes Turkey as its role model
Güven Sak, PhD
30 April 2013
In Northern Cyprus, the public budget mainly means taking financial aid from Turkey and distributing it to Turkish Cypriots. The Eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus is still divided in two. There are separate elections and governments in the south and in the north. Every public service is organized by two different administrations in each. Recently in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I was surprised when I saw that each ethnic group uses different buses. I guess the Cypriot case escaped my mind then. Ethnic clashes lead to such nonsense. Once the clash begins, wisdom leaves the room. Cyprus has Turkish Cypriots in the north and Greek Cypriots in the south. These two groups with their own hands destroyed the joint state they once had established together. The Greek Cypriots still pretend that the
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Turkey is still an introverted country
Güven Sak, PhD
26 April 2013
The success stories of Turkey’s fast growth companies must be heard by the world. Turkey is still an introverted country. From an objective point of view, I think that Turkey looks like an introverted adolescent. Think about it: The people of Turkey learned that opening up to the world brings prosperity in the 1980s. Export figures have grown rapidly since then. Turkey was a sleepy agricultural country before the 1980s. It has now become a dynamic, mid-tech industrial country. But I don’t think that Turkey is open enough. This is partly because we overestimate ourselves and our problems. Since we always get above ourselves, we are not able to empathize with the world's problems. We do not care if the world burns to the ground.
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Bathroom graffiti has started to vanish since Twitter and Facebook
Güven Sak, PhD
23 April 2013
With social media, graffiti and writings on public toilet walls and stalls have become rare. A friend whose ideas I respect asked me this the other day: Have you noticed that with social media, graffiti and writings on public toilet walls and stalls have become rare? I am not sure to what degree this is related to social media per se. I am not arguing that toilet graffiti has gone extinct. Thanks to social media, however, there is a new dynamic that tears down the oppressive climate expressed with toilet graffiti. People now have a new channel where they can voice their reaction against oppression. Turkey is among the top ten countries in terms of number of Twitter and Facebook accounts. We must start thinking about the potential outcomes. Technological change is the strongest tool for de
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It’s refreshing to see paintings from Gaza
Güven Sak, PhD
20 April 2013
I have walked many times through the Erez crossing at the northern end of the Gaza Strip. Not once did it make me think of art. The dusty no man’s land between the Israeli and two Palestinian checkpoints, one for the Palestinian National Authority and the other for Hamas, never made me think about the painters of Gaza. My mistake. I should have seen the paintings of Palestinian artists years ago. Alas, I made it last week, at the Palestine Development and Investment Corporation’s (PADICO) headquarters in Ramallah. I should have guessed that there was more to come when, entering the premises, I saw a painting of Mahmoud Darwish, the poet of the Palestinian resistance. On the walls of the meeting room I saw a number of vivid abstract paintings from Gaza and an astonishing portrait
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Microsoft Excel is to blame for the world’s misery!
Güven Sak, PhD
19 April 2013
Economists should take sides in discussions on the basis of their research conclusions, and not do research in line with their political stance. The global economic crisis of 2008 is dragging on. It burst forth in the US, at the heart of our civilization. The US economy is still in intensive care. Europe has not even made it to the post-op phase yet. It has been years, but the world is not yet sure how to respond to the crisis. There is a deep-rooted dissidence. It was first between economists, now it is between politicians. On the one hand are those who think austerity measures can lift the US from the crisis (the Republican Party). On the other hand are those who believe increased public spending is the way out (the Democratic Party). Both camps have their economists. The debate has not
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Why would I bother with VC finance if I can put a plaza up over here?
Güven Sak, PhD
16 April 2013
You cannot develop breathtaking innovations if the legislation on intellectual property rights is not accompanied by a functional court system I heard this the other day. Garaj, the incubation center of the TOBB University of Economics and Technology, holds TechTalkThursday events, hosting a leading entrepreneur. Last Thursday’s guest was Numan Numan, venture capitalist and entrepreneur. He said this when he was telling about how he had opened his venture capital (VC) fund. He said: “One of the investors I visited when I was trying to raise funds for the VC said, ‘I am putting up a plaza over there; returns guaranteed. Why would I bother investing in your VC fund?’" I found this hilarious, and noted it down.
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Welcome back to Israel
Güven Sak, PhD
13 April 2013
I was back in Israel this week. And I have to confess; it is good to be a Turkish traveler in Israel nowadays. Many ordinary Israeli citizens had the same reaction when they met me: “Oh, are you from Turkey? Welcome back.” On a personal level, it felt good to be back in Tel Aviv, to have dinner at Manta Ray. When the waitress there heard that I was from Turkey, she brought a bottle of champagne before taking our table’s orders. “We are friends again”, she said while serving the bottle and noting that it was on the house. So many “missed you”s, in the last couple of days. As I said, it is enchanting to be a Turkish traveler in Tel Aviv these days. At another of my favorite restaurants by the pier of Jaffa, at the Container, I met an Israeli clarinet player very fluent in Turkish
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If the US economy is ailing, why is the demand for $100 bills increasing?
Güven Sak, PhD
12 April 2013
Eighty-five percent of the dollars in circulation are in non-American pockets. There is no better confidence indicator than this. The Federal Reserve, or just "the Fed," prints the US dollar. It physically prints it, with printing machines, using ink and paper. A one hundred dollar bill is just a piece of paper with numbers and images on it. But everyone has confidence in it. Actually, everyone has confidence in the United States of America. People prefer the US dollar as a store of value. I guess the most favorite store of value for mattress-savers is the one hundred dollar bill. The rising demand for one hundred dollar bills shows that the crisis did not harm but strengthen the confidence in the US economy. The weakness of the new electronic currency, Bitcoin (BTC), is the strength of th
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Why Kurdish politicians should start learning the language of development
Güven Sak, PhD
06 April 2013
Turkey is in a process of reconciliation. After 30 years of armed Kurdish uprising, the country is in a state of cautious optimism. This is Turkey’s second attempt in the last 10 years to move toward a solution. The first one failed after a series of public diplomacy disasters. The government was at the time unaware of the nonlinear dynamics of reconciliation processes. I hope that this time is different.If peace does come about, should we expect a dividend? Yes. But who has the most to gain from the process, Gaziantep or Diyarbakır? Gaziantep, definitely. The economic impact of the reconciliation process is best analyzed by comparing the investment climate in different cities around Turkey. At TEPAV, we have been assessing investment climates at the city level for the past two
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As we live longer, why don't we get wealthier?
Güven Sak, PhD
02 April 2013
If the investment climate puts a country’s entrepreneurs down and out, that country cannot make the leap to prosperity. This is what I have been occupied with lately: Forty decades ago, the average life expectancy of a baby born in Turkey who was one year old was 23 years less than that of a Swedish baby. Since that time, the difference has been reduced to eight years. At the same time, the life expectancy in Turkey has risen from 50 to 74 years meanwhile.
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