Libya is one of those countries where two cultures meet with each other in a rather visible fashion. Do you remember the opening observations of Trotsky in "Russian Revolution 1917"? Just like that: "Savages throw away their bows and arrows for rifles all at once, without travelling the road which lay between these two weapons in the past." Whenever I think of the now deposed president of the Mickey Mouse state in Libya, I think of this articulation of cultures and/or modes of production. There are two types of countries in the world: Those that are integrated and those that are articulated to the global economic system. Libya belongs to the second. There are so many countries in our neighborhood that belong to this second group. Turkey on the other hand belongs to the first group. That makes Turkey, the only country of our neighborhood other than Israel, well integrated in global economic, political and social networks, important for our civilization. Unlike Israel, Turkey could directly participate in intervening in the development process of other countries. Not through armies of soldiers, but with armies of entrepreneurs. Life is a changing.

The most important global project of the twentieth century was the integration of China in the global economic network. It looks as if time has come for the integration of the Islamic geography to the global economic system in the 21st century. That is how I tend to see the Arab Spring nowadays. It started in Tunisia and Egypt and toppled governments there relatively easily. Both Tunisia and Egypt are less articulated but more integrated in the global economic system. There is some basic modern institutional structure to guide the transition process. But not so in Libya and Yemen. The latter are more articulated than integrated. What does the end of the Mickey Mouse state in Libya mean for the integration project? This should be a new beginning to mend the missing link. Bring in policy reforms for the free interaction of market participants. Moammar bey has been preventing this to secure his personal grip on power for the last 42 years.

Less integrated more articulated means that there is a missing link in the modernization process. The missing link is about the level of development of the middle class. Middle class means those people who prove their successes in the marketplace every day. The middle class is not about sons and friends of Hosni bey in Egypt but those unnamed entrepreneurs earning their way through free interaction in the market place. The absence of policy reforms and price controls everywhere is what deters entrepreneurial development. The 1980 policy reforms in Turkey made Turkey ready to play a pivotal role in the integration of our neighborhood in the global economic system.

Col. Gadhafi has been leading a country where the schoolchildren believe that the highest rank in the army is a colonel? Funny? Not funny at all a short while ago in that Mickey Mouse state in Libya. Turkey was like that some time ago, too. There was this rather strong ideological certainty that "there are no Kurds living on Earth!" It just started to evaporate with the opening of the country together with increasing wealth that the openness has brought. We now have a 19th century problem to deal with in the 21st century. That is what the Kurdish issue is turning into nowadays.

The second before the last legacy of the Ottoman Empire still haunts us. Turkey on the other hand is better placed to deal with this legacy compared to 10 years ago.

This commentary was published on 27.08.2011 in Hürriyet Daily News.