Güven Sak, PhD
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Internal Migration Dynamics in Turkey
I think I first heard it from Bernard Lewis – Turks’ endless fascination in moving westwards. He writes of the move from Central Asia into Anatolia and the Balkans, and…
Without Turkcell, Erzurum would cease to exist
My niece Ela is seven. Yesterday we were chatting. She said, “my pattern is obvious. First I am skinny, than I put on weight. This is followed by a period of me getting…
No victor but so many victims anyways
Reading the Obama interview of Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, I have come to the conclusion that we still do not know how to go from diagnosis to policy action.…
Part-time terrorists and the dwindling Turkish-Iraqi trade
I was lately struck by a rather recent story from Gaziantep, Turkey. It is so ordinary and so horrible at the same time. It is about part-time terrorists and the…
The condition of women in Turkey is no laughing matter
Our deputy prime minister, Bülent Arınç, recently let slip his opinion that “women should not laugh in front of everybody” Why does he think so? Beats me. I think it’s a…
Cohabitation alla Turca
Turkey is about to set sail in uncharted waters. Starting August 29, we are going to have a directly elected President. That is the date for the transfer of Office right…
Corruption grows as infrastructure grows
I attended a meeting on the need for global infrastructure investments the other day. One of the speakers said, “If corruption were an industry, it would be the…
How did it happen in Turkey but not elsewhere?
On the plane to Sydney, Australia, this week, I took to reading Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s The Time Regulation Institute (1961). I had time; the flight from Abu Dhabi to…
Why has the number of high school interns been increasing?
It was in the Bloomberg Businessweek the other day ( http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-10/silicon-valley-interns-facebook-welcomes-high-school-recruits ):…
How ISIS activity is bad for Turkey
Of the 30 billion dollar Iraqi exports, a third is from Turkey. Gaziantep alone provides around a fifth of Iraq’s imports. So Iraq by itself is important for Turkey. Now…
Is İhsanoğlu David to Erdoğan’s Goliath?
Turkey is going to elect its 12th president this year, with the election’s first round to be held on August 10. The first 11 of our presidents were elected by…
A draft bill on “you-know-what”
Can you solve a problem by not naming it? That is how the Kurdish reconciliation process has been managed so far. Now, a new draft law on the issue has been sent to the…