Lessons of Uludere
Güven Sak, PhD
14 January 2012
We need to revisit our urbanization policies, if there are any. We have to increase connectivity, make our policies more structural and more effective. I have to start by confessing that I only understood the significance of what happened in Uludere after hearing about the Şırnak Governerate’s press release recently. My mistake entirely. Today I would like to talk about my thoughts regarding the Uludere incident as an economist and native of Turkey. The press release was about correcting the number of dead citizens of Turkey to 34, not 35, as it was previously known. It goes something like this: “The body parts of one person were mistakenly identified as the body parts of another, which led to the belief 35 had died. However, the evidence indicates that the number is 34 now.”
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Is the Northern Marmara Highway a good idea?
Güven Sak, PhD
13 January 2012
That all of our dreams are about reconstructing Istanbul is a sign of illness. The cost of the Northern Marmara Highway, which involves the construction of a third Bosporus Bridge, has been estimated at US$ 5 billion. The auction was held the other day, but no bids were received. I believe this is the first evidence of what we have to expect in economic terms in 2012. I had a reason for saying, “This will be a year to maintain what you have, not to accumulate more.” My purpose is not to write another commentary themed “What will follow the Indian Summer?” I will cut it short. Today, I want to talk about the highway project directly. I tried to stress some points about urbanization in Turkey during some of my previous commentaries. Today, I want to continue by addressing this subject in the
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Can Turkey create the Shenzhen of its own?
Güven Sak, PhD
10 January 2012
Let’s just say it: Bursa, Diyarbakir and Gaziantep are undersized because of the current administrative structure in Turkey. The other day I asked, “Why has Bursa not grown?” My argument followed like this: Dallas, the fourth largest city in the US, is one-third the size of New York, the most crowded city. In Turkey, however, the fourth largest city, Bursa, is less than one-sixth the size of Istanbul, the most populous city. The problem is not that Bursa is undersized; it is that Istanbul has grown huge. As the population has concentrated in Istanbul, other provinces have suffered from a skills deficit. This was the main lesson I drew. Then, what to do?
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Why has Bursa not grown?
Güven Sak, PhD
06 January 2012
We are stuck in mediocrity because Bursa, Gaziantep and Diyarbakir were undersized and Istanbul has grown huge. Do you once in a while avoid the unfruitful and highly political agenda of the county and take a look around you? Please do that. Every time I look around, I start thinking that Turkey will never make it to the twenty-first century. Turkey has a nineteenth century agenda to deal with in the twenty-first century. But it not only has failed to make any progress in solving them, it also faces the risk of missing the twenty-first century. I believe that the question in the title is the primary issue with which Turkey has to deal at this point in time. Have you ever thought that Turkey’s key problem, including the nineteenth century problems with which we are currently struggling, mig
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Euro celebrations fell through
Güven Sak, PhD
03 January 2012
The negative forecast for Italy has played a major role in the emergence of the opinion that the Eurozone might break up. The first banknotes of the European common currency, the Euro, began to circulate on June 1, 2002. The shift to the new currency, in fact, had started in 1999. You might remember, back then all of the countries in the Eurozone used to attach tags that showed the price in both their national currency and Euro. Say you had coffee in a shop in Belgium. You would receive a bill that showed the price in both Belgium franks and in Euro. In 2002, the Euro ceased to be virtual and became tangible. Today, no one in celebrating the tenth anniversary of Euro’s tangible life. Back then, however, everyone had high hopes for the Euro. No one had foreseen that we would end up at this
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A year to hoard cash rather than spending
Güven Sak, PhD
31 December 2011
2012 will be a year to hoard cash rather than to spend or invest. It will be about staying solvent. Since the beginning of the 2008 crisis, Europe’s troubles have been helping Turkey to sustain the unsustainable. The crisis has created a savings surplus in Europe, which is rather useful for Turkey in the short term. Turkey’s healthy banking system was also useful as a rapid output recovery process after the big slump of 2009. Turkey was one of the worst hit and among the fastest to recover during the last couple of years. Approaching 2012, the nature of the European crisis is changing. European governments will soon have to pay the price of mismanagement. Funding rates are increasing and deleveraging has come knocking on the door. That means double jeopardy for Turkey. We are not only goin
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The great game of pool
Güven Sak, PhD
31 December 2011
If you cannot plan your position ahead of time, you open yourself up to the random forces of the table. That appears to be the case for Turkey now. I must have heard it first from Madeleine Albright at a meeting in Ankara few years back. She was answering a question about the famous geo-strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski’s grand chessboard analogy. “I do not think that diplomacy could be visualized as a chessboard,” she said. “To me, it is more of a pool table. You aim at a ball but your move impacts other balls on the table. With every move, all the balls on the pool table could be influenced.” A hefty game of pool is going on in our neighborhood. We in Turkey are not the primary target, but every hit influences us nonetheless. The thrust came from North Africa and traveled up to
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Will the new constitution solve problems?
Güven Sak, PhD
30 December 2011
That consensus is difficult does not necessarily mean that it is impossible. Now, the job is more troublesome since the divisions are more deeply rooted. Today is the last day of 2011. In the previous commentary, I described the problems I expect for 2012. Today, referring to the present picture, let me take a look at the means we have at hand with which to deal with those problems. If you are interested, please read on.
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Are you ready for an exhausting year?
Güven Sak, PhD
27 December 2011
It seems 2012 will be a year dominated by political debates and lingering economic reforms; one we will look forward to having finished. Am I getting old? I expect 2012 to be more exhausting than 2011. It seems we will waste all of our energy once again and our actions will not bear fruit. It seems 2012 will be a year dominated by political debates and lingering economic reforms; one we will look forward to having finished. We are on the eve of a year during which huge successes will be less likely and our horizon will shorten. This is what I think. I hope I am way out in left field. Let me first state my main observation: 2012 will be a year during which preservation will be more important than advancement. Let me tell you why. Maybe I’m wrong.
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Why Turkey is lagging
Güven Sak, PhD
24 December 2011
Turkey is a country of policy failures, making the country a useful case study for our neighbors these days. Turkey is lagging behind? Sounds perplexing, doesn’t it? Especially when one considers that Turkey’s growth in 2011 has surpassed even that of China. That is when I started hearing questions like “Is Turkey an economic exception amid the global crisis?” The true economic character of a country, however, can only be portrayed by its experience, and Turkey’s is there to analyze in numbers. The figures indicate that relative to the GDP per capita of the United States, Turkey performs badly when compared to Greece, Spain and Portugal. We only appear invincible because we no longer lag as badly behind Southern Europe as we used to. The culprit behind this misperception, a new
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