Protesters are the patrons of the police
Güven Sak, PhD
28 December 2012
I believe that the attitude of the police towards protesters is one of the most critical stages of their mental transformation. So what happened at Middle East Technical University (METU)? Exactly what happened during the October 29th Republic Day ceremonies in Ankara, if you ask me. Thousands of police officers failed to control a few hundreds of students with democratic practices. Visiting METU for the launch ceremony of the first Turkish satellite, Göktürk-2, prime minister Erdoğan was protested by a group of students, as always.
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Women will save Turkey
Güven Sak, PhD
25 December 2012
If they leave their homes and join the labor force, women really can save Turkey. I remember a story in Bloomberg earlier this year that said the sales of adult diapers in Japan exceeded those for babies for the first time this year. The story was about the rising share of people over 60 in the population changing consumer behavior. By 2050, 36 percent of Japan’s population will be over 60, compared to 9 percent presently. The working age population (15-64) that peaked in 1995 with 87 million people is expected to gradually fall to 54 million, the bottom level recorded in 1945. So, how can Japan grow in the period ahead? Under normal conditions, as the employed population will shrink, the economy also will shrink. So, Japan has to either enhance its productivity level or increase the size
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Turkey’s eroding industrial base shows bad policy
Güven Sak, PhD
22 December 2012
Deindustrialization is the surest way to stuck Turkey in the middle. Whenever I am asked to comment on the last 10 years in Turkey, I find myself reaching for the opening lines of “A Tale of Two Cities:” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Like the Dickensian atmosphere of revolutionary Paris of 1789, Turkey has continued its transformation process over the past decade. Ten years ago, budget deficits and the outstanding government debt were the major issues. Not anymore. Now the rule of the ballot box is stronger. We are talking about things that we could not talk about 10 years ago. As is the case in every transformation, the country stayed divided on every conceivable issue. The freedom of the press has quietly suffered as self-censorship rose. Economically,
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A business is futile if its value is based on the value of the land
Güven Sak, PhD
21 December 2012
Competition driven by rental income takes place behind closed doors. It is for a reason that polls show a strong perception of corruption within municipalities.
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Women are employed only if there are no men left to employ
Güven Sak, PhD
18 December 2012
Today we are about to learn that if half of the population is confined to their homes, Turkey will not become affluent. Turkey is the only OECD country in which the female labor force participation rate (FLFP) is below 30 percent. I am not arguing if this is good or bad, I am just sharing a fact. The number of women in employment is lower than the number of housewives: 8 million and 12 million, respectively. This means, 60 percent of Turkey’s women make dolma and watch daytime television. According to TURKSTAT’s household surveys, women prefer sitting at home over a steady paycheck. Do they, really? Is there nothing to blame on employers? There is, but this is changing now.
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Turkey trapped in the middle
Güven Sak, PhD
15 December 2012
Turkey’s economy is trapped in the middle because of the persistent mediocrity of our education, tax and judicial systems. The title should sound familiar. It may seem to you that Turkey today finds itself trapped in the middle in many respects. I, for one, hear it often these days: We are trapped in the middle of the Iranian crisis, not to even mention the one between Baghdad and Arbil. How about the crisis in Syria? Measures have been taken, Patriots are coming to the rescue. However, I would like to point out a distinction. In none of the above cases is Turkey uncomfortably sandwiched in a situation of its own making. We simply happen to have crisis-prone borders. I see only one case in which Turkey is caught in the middle due to its own choices - that is the economy, as you mi
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Interest rent is illicit. Is land rent licit?
Güven Sak, PhD
14 December 2012
I believe that Turkey has been deindustrializing due to this second rent economy era. One type of rentier went and one other type of rentier has appeared in Turkey. Each is based on different structural defects. Let’s recall: in the past, the inability to ensure fiscal discipline forced the public sector to borrow extensively and thus to pay high interest. Today, the strategy is to flip-flop zoning regulations and raise land value via state decisions. In the past, we used to buy securities and wait for returns, without actually making an effort. Today, we purchase land and wait for its price to rise. And it actually does rise. Profits today are as unearned as they used to be. Turkey did not tax interest revenue. Neither does it tax unearned income from land today. In the end, however, Turk
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If you cannot protect the İnci Patisserie, you cannot maintain your industry
Güven Sak, PhD
11 December 2012
Those who are not trying to protect İnci Patisserie cannot be considered conservatives. A conservative without tradition is like meat-free sausage or milk-free yoghurt. I was born in Bursa in the second half of the 1960s. Every now and then, my family would go to Istanbul. During these short visits, we definitely would stop by the famous İnci Patisserie. I ate my first profiterole there in the first half of the 1970s. Now the news has come that İnci has been closed down, as part of the urban transformation project the government is carrying out in Beyoğlu. I believe that a country unable to protect İnci Patisserie is unable to protect its industry. If not taxed heavily, urban rent will wash away a country’s industry. The reason why Turkey moved off the list of the world’s industrial giants
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Why Turkey wants Kurdish oil
Güven Sak, PhD
08 December 2012
Diversification is always good, but regional turbulence makes Turkey even more interested in Kurdish oil and natural gas. There are two types of countries in the world – those in which you get to your email as soon as you turn on your smart phone at the airport and those in which you do not. Arbil’s sleek International Airport in northern Iraq puts its country in the first type. It is part of our civilization. The airport was modernized in 2010, by a Turkish construction company of course. That didn’t mean, however, that Turkey’s energy minister was welcome. Baghdad did not allow his private jet to land, preventing the minister from participating at an oil and gas conference in the city.
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What happened at TÜBA happens at CERN
Güven Sak, PhD
07 December 2012
Losing space of autonomy, TÜBA has become an element of administrative organization during the rule of the current government. Science does not like politics. Positive science has no ideology and abhors politics. Why? Scientists draw conclusions on the subjects they study through experiments or existing evidence and take sides in discussions on the basis of those conclusions. Politicians by definition take sides from the very beginning. They consider a given issue from the perspective of their side and fabricate evidence accordingly. Science researches; politics produce materials for debate. This is why it is a bad idea to leave decisions on science policy and R&D expenditures to politicians alone. Politics likes producing policy-based evidence while science likes designing evidence-b
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