Why Brexit is important for Turkey
Güven Sak, PhD
08 January 2019
Brexit discussions has turned into a farce in the UK. If we consider the referendum itself as a tragedy, Prime Minister May’s handling of the Brexit process has turned it into a comedy. Currently, there is a whole new discussion on how Brexit should be carried out. Interestingly, the current discussions are all UK-centric. However Brexit is more important for Turkey than you may imagine, therefore how they see this process through with the UK is so very important for the EU, too. Let me explain.
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Is it just another election season?
Güven Sak, PhD
30 December 2018
This week minimum wage has increased by 26 percent while household natural gas and electricity prices have declined 10 percent. The President himself has made the announcement. These can be thought kind of a new year’s present for the nation. Turkey is going to have its municipal election in March 2019. You may say that it is just another election season in Turkey? I tend to disagree. This time is different.
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Why is the US-China confrontation heating up?
Güven Sak, PhD
23 December 2018
About ten years ago, it was the Americans who started funding projects to revitalize the old Silk Road - the land route connecting China to Europe. I specifically remember how an American official told me not to waste my time with projects on Israel-Palestine, and to look more closely at Central Asia. People were doing things like sending test containers over silk road train tracks, just to see how much time it would take. Projections at the time made a striking case. Companies – many of them American – were going to reorient their supply chain logistics according to this plan.
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China to operate the new port in Haifa
Güven Sak, PhD
09 December 2018
It’s that time of the year again, when we look back and think about all that’s happened in the past eleven months. So here’s a question: what was the most significant strategic event of 2018? Let me tell you my favorite in the Middle East. In July 2018, the management of the first part of the new port in Haifa was transferred to the Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG). Despite President Trump’s ferocious anti-China stance, Israel still decided to give SIPG a 25-year strategic perch in our region. I think this is very important. Let me tell you why.
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It’s time to make the G20 work for the Rest
Güven Sak, PhD
02 December 2018
The G20 Summit started in Buenos Aires, Argentina this week. The G7 represents the West (plus Japan), while the G20 could be thought of as G7 + 13, with the 13 being the representatives of “the Rest.” I remember the Turkish and Chinese Presidencies of the G20 in 2015 and 2016 very vividly. How hopeful we all were to make the G20 more inclusive! To turn it into a mechanism that would bring “the Rest” into the fold! Yet the only news item coming out of the G20 this year appears to be bilaterals, or the occasional drama, like who dares to have their picture taken with the radioactive Saudi crown prince. It is a pity, if you ask me.
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Turkey is among top ten reformers in 2018
Güven Sak, PhD
11 November 2018
The World Bank released its Doing Business 2019 report just about ten days ago. And guess what? Turkey is among the top ten reformers this year. That is good, but not enough if Turkey wants to fulfill its potential. Let me expand on that a bit.
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Answers to Misconceptions - What is Sunnism and what it is not
Hilmi Demir, PhD.
06 November 2018
The Sunni tradition represents the mainstream of fourteen centuries of Islamic tradition. As its accepting, inclusive, and tolerant language melts away, the its center is occupied by extreme views that should otherwise remain in the margins of society. The hierarchy of Islamic sciences and education has yielded its place to the ideological and transient manifests of political movement. Discourses that are not profound matters, that are distant to metaphysical tension, that are deprived of knowledge of law, method, aphorism and wisdom are bound to be discarded and left to wither away with the very first lights of the sun. That is what is happening. Instead of the Sunnism that has for centuries been put up status quo, accused by pacifism and castigated by with accusations of sectarianism, we
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How we all became “unknown Middle Easterners”
Güven Sak, PhD
04 November 2018
Every flower has a season. Every idea has its time. That’s what I have been thinking about at the D-8 meeting in Antalya this week. The “Developing 8” was established by the late Prof. Erbakan in 1997, when he was prime minister of Turkey. This was right around the time when the G20 started as a meeting of finance ministers in response to the 1997 financial crisis. Erbakan was Turkey’s first Islamist prime minster, and he set up the D-8 as a forum for major Muslim counties. It was composed of Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey which have 15 percent of the world population. Back then, the union was fairly representative of the Muslim world, but had little coherence aside from that. It didn’t really come together as a policy unit. Today, that has cha
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Germany-Turkey: it’s about more than just migration
Güven Sak, PhD
28 October 2018
The German Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmeier, accompanied by a large delegation, was in Ankara this week. The German-Turkish rapprochement that President Erdoğan’s Berlin visit last hit off last month, is still in full swing. Once more, I heard that slipshod comment: “it’s all about the migration issue. Merkel needs it badly!” someone was saying. That is not correct. Turkish-German cooperation goes beyond the migration issue.
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Keeping up appearances
Güven Sak, PhD
21 October 2018
Remember the British comedy series in the 1990s, Keeping Up Appearances? Hyacinth Bucket, poor soul, so much liked to pronounce her surname as “Bouquet” when answering the phone. She used to say thing like “Oh, It's my sister Violet calling! She's the one with the Mercedes, swimming pool, and room for a pony.” Keep pretending to be less miserable, and less poor than you really are, and maybe you will be. Right?
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