Muslims don’t trade enough
Güven Sak, PhD
07 July 2012
Most of the OIC countries have closed and heavily controlled economies and they don’t trade enough among themselves. Because their governments don’t allow them. I used to enjoy participating in the Economic and Commercial Committee meetings of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Not anymore. I get the feeling that the business people there are constrained.
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'Turks have the sense of time'
Güven Sak, PhD
06 July 2012
Any country willing to undertake a regional role has to go beyond rural coffee talk. The other day in Barcelona, an official from a company that does business in Turkey and North Africa said to me: “I am not saying this because you also are a Turk, but if a Turk makes an appointment, he or she arrives on time. Turks have a developed sense of time.” At first, I was greatly surprised; his remark was quite unexpected. I personally do not have a sense of time and space. But people abroad appear to see us differently, relative to other countries that they do business with. Or perhaps you take after the qualities and characteristics of the people with whom you trade. More than half of Turkey’s exports go to European Union countries. Maybe we have started to resemble Europeans as we interact and
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80 Mango stores in Turkey, 5 in Egypt
Güven Sak, PhD
03 July 2012
To be able to assess the countries of the region with a different perspective, Turkey has to compile data. You cannot easily become the order-setter by just saying it. Mango is a Spanish clothing design and manufacturing company, founded in 1984. Currently it has 2494 stores worldwide; 80 in Turkey and only 5 in Egypt. Turkey’s and Egypt’s populations are 75 million and 80 million, respectively. But there are a significantly higher number of Mango stores in Turkey. Moreover, the working styles of the stores in the two countries are different. A couple of days ago, I said, “there are two types of countries: those that enrich their populations and those that cannot.” The people living in the former are generally more integrated into the rest of the world. They go shop in any one of the 2494
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Syria and the Golden Rule
Güven Sak, PhD
30 June 2012
In the past, Syria has sponsored Kurdish rebels inside Turkey. Now Turkey seems to be sponsoring a similar insurgency inside Syria. There are struggles for survival going on all around Turkey. It has always been this way. There is one in Syria to the south. More than one generation of Iranians also grew up in that way. We should not forget about Israel either, and even add Putin’s Russia to the picture. Turks definitely have a clear knowledge of the feeling. The Turkish Republic was founded on an existential threat, as its empire crumbled to dust. It is fear that shapes policy in our neighborhood. Incumbent leaders are in a hopeless struggle to consolidate their gains, ever watchful of someone coming in taking what is theirs (read Chiozza and Goemans’ “Leadership and International
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Turkey has to strengthen its middle class
Güven Sak, PhD
29 June 2012
The key challenge is to enrich the people and strengthen the middle class. Without a strong middle class, Turkey cannot become a high-income country. When I was born, we had a refrigerator in the house. Dad later told me that they had bought the AEG refrigerator after I was born. We also had a telephone, which remained as a rare necessity for a long time in Turkey. People used to make an effort to get a phone line connected to their houses. Back then, you had to connect separately to the line via the operator for each toll call. It was not possible to just dial and call. It wasn’t until the 1970s that we had a TV at home. The broadcast was not 24/7 and it was black and white. But it cheered us up big time. That was the first time I watched the Star Trek. In the second half of the 1970s, I
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Turkey is among the top 100 countries that disrespect women
Güven Sak, PhD
26 June 2012
If Turkey could improve its female labor force participation rate to that of South Korea, it could have a national income of $1.1 trillion today. What is the main distinguishing feature of the present era? I increasingly think that the current era is that of premade lists. We have lists of the largest avenues and the most crowded cities. It is very easy to compare your country with others. Figures are easily accessible. In the past, it needed effort to prepare any kind of list. Today, it is possible to compare any two things and identify the position of your county in the world rank. The list of best and worst countries for women was announced in late 2011. There are 165 countries on the list, and Turkey ranks 114th. That is, Turkey is not a good country to live for women. According to thi
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Why don’t women work in Turkey?
Güven Sak, PhD
23 June 2012
Women in Turkey do not work. I think that our cities are simply not women-friendly environments. Women in Turkey just don’t work. Our country has the lowest female labor force participation rate among the OECD, including Mexico and Korea. Below 30 percent, Turkey’s female labor force participation rate is like Ireland’s in 1981. Turkey ranks lowest even among Muslim-majority countries. What is the problem? Why don’t women work in this country?
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Perhaps we should invite Greek’s youth to Turkey
Güven Sak, PhD
22 June 2012
Yes, two Greeks make one German in terms of productivity. But two Turks hardly make a Greek. The world has been changing constantly. Even the meaning of what people who are now deceased had once said changed. You do not know who or what to trust anymore. Last year, we had learned that former Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai’s remarks on the French Revolution, previously thought to have referred to the revolution of the 1789, actually referred to the student protests of 1968. It appears that his statements were lost in translation, as one who was with Kissinger during the related visit reported. I guess you know the story: Zhou Enlai was asked, “What do you think about the impact of the French Revolution and the Paris Commune?” “Too early to say,” he replied, despite the revolution had tak
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How to deliver goods from Cairo to Tunisia?
Güven Sak, PhD
19 June 2012
Turkey can change its fate only by diversifying trade activities towards the east. But of course, trade diversification is not an easy task. How do you deliver goods from one city to another? You just load the goods on a truck and send them, you might say. But when cities in two different countries are concerned, the truth of the matter is different. There must be free movement of goods and vehicles between the two countries concerned. The waiting time at borders must be short. The driver must be familiar with the recipient country. The roads of the recipient county must be safe and secure. The list goes like this. Therefore, the transportation of goods is best handled in the accustomed way. In that case, the best route to transport any good from Egypt’s capitol Cairo to Tunisia’s capital
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The revolution is good for Egypt’s grocers
Güven Sak, PhD
16 June 2012
It is thanks to the Tahrir revolutionaries that the ballot box has finally come to Egypt. I was in Cairo this week and met with many different people during my three-day stay. Let me tell you about their feelings.
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