Turkey does not have the chance to assume a 'wait-and-see' policy with respect to electic automobile technology.

Do you follow the debates on renewable energy and electric automobiles? I personally find the arguments following one another quite interesting. Focusing on the debate of the last week, I think Nihat Ergün, Minister of Industry and Trade, rather than Taner Yıldız, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, is right. Turkey does not have the chance to assume a 'wait-and-see' policy with respect to new technologies. This 'wait, we will see what to do when the technology is sufficiently developed first' attitude reminds me how Turkey lost pace over the last decade.

Recently, Minister of Industry declared the government's will to 'subsidize the electric automobile market' which went beyond the prevalent 'wait-and-see' attitude in Turkey. However, simultaneous with this, Minister of Energy made another statement which basically tended to 'swing the lead' with regards to renewable energy. I personally consider the attitude of Minister of Energy as an extension of the attitude of the country towards new technologies: "We had better wait. It is not our job to finance the technology development. We should first wait and see what this is about. Only then we can step in." I think this attitude is incorrect in terms of industrial policy in the current era. I believe that similar mistakes were done also before.

The global crisis has swept away the old normal. Now everyone is trying to define the new normal which brings about new technologies. There include renewable energy technologies and electric auto technologies among others. Wind and solar energy and a transportation sector relying on these constitute a major agenda item. What was considered to be unfeasible in the past seems feasible today. Turkey should not make the mistake of evaluating the new technologies as if they are the old technologies of the industrial revolution. Please note that the spread of steam engines was not the same with that of personal computers. Now technologies spread much easily. Chinese miracles shine over there as the fruit of this new technological milieu. So we had better learn our lesson. Now it is among the top priorities to transfer the technology first and to build capacity to work on that technology afterwards. Turkey has to get involved in the global processes pertaining to issues like renewable energy or electric automobiles. In this context, it proves of great importance to train engineers, designers and urban development experts to study on these subjects and thus to build capacity in development of new technologies.

I believe that Turkey lags behind more and more in this field. We should always keep in mind how Turkey missed the technological advance in the televisions sector. Being sound asleep between 1996 and 2005, what happened when the government said 'OK, let us subsidize this shift to new technology, then'? We suddenly realized that we do not have enough expert engineers capable of facilitating the shift from tube televisions to LCD and plasma technology. Today, the television sector in Turkey loses altitude. Please keep this always in mind.

Turkey needs to be more active in terms of new technologies in order to reinforce its position in the new normal. However this is not the current myopic attitude represents.

And the myopia is unfortunately not limited to the public sector. Have you read the statement by Mustafa Koç, President of the High Advisory Board of TUSIAD (Association of Industrialists and Businessman of Turkey)? It read 'Turkey proved that we can survive without the IMF. It appears that we have pushed the government for nothing.' Industrialist can also assume a myopic attitude, then! The issue seems to be multidimensional indeed. I will touch upon Mr. Koc's interesting statement later.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 30.11.2010