If you are proud of İstinye Park in Istanbul, Seoul is entirely designed like that.

I have been in South Korea’s capital Seoul for the last few days. This is my first time here. On your way from the airport to the hotel in any country, you can easily understand if you are in a civilized city or in a hardship area. Seoul is at the heart of civilization. You can tell if a city is civilized simply from its streets. Let me tell you how.

The first test was completed when I turned on my Blackberry at the airport. If you are able to download new emails to your inbox easily, the first stage of the civilization test is complete. If you are able to receive your emails, it means that you are within the area of civilization. This was not the case in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan, or in Sana of Yemen. In Saudi Arabia, I could not access my emails on my Blackberry since the state had blocked it for they were not able to sneak in my account without my permission. Seoul passed the first test instantly.

If you ask me, the second indicator of a civilized country is the number of women walking on the streets. The level of civilization of a given city increases as with the number of women walking quickly and with determined steps increases. If you only see men, then you are in a hardship area. This is a constant fact. Cities where women are afraid to go out are in hardship zones. There were no women around in Kabul, Sana or Jeddah. By the way, let me note that even so, all of these countries are far beyond Turkey concerning the rate of female participation in the labor force. Anyway, Seoul passed the second test immediately.

The third stage of the civilization test is when you look at the sidewalks of a city. You can tell the level of civilization in a country by looking at how neat its sidewalks are. Civilized local administrations who care about the residents of a city consider for at least for fifteen minutes how people can walk comfortably and take measures accordingly. They design sidewalks to make sure that people will be able walk easily, not in order to transfer funds to their supporters. The level of development of a city is related to the ease of walking on its streets. The sidewalks of Seoul were just like those of New York. Yellow gouges on them attracted my attention immediately. They were noticeable, because they were different. That part of the sidewalks is designed for sight-disabled people, to enable them walk alone.  Seoul’s sidewalks are designed in a way that everyone can walk alone. As a resident of Ankara, which has no sidewalks, I felt that I was in a civilized city that cares for its inhabitants. Concerning this last indicator, Seoul is like a regular city of any core country. No one uses the sidewalks as a parking lot. The subway worked smoothly; the mass transportation system was advanced.

In Turkey, on International Working Women’s Day, March 8, we organized a Constitution Platform Citizens’ Meeting in Ankara with the participation of women. I asked them what their chief demand was from local administrations. We had designed this question to learn what women want most. Seventy-six percent said mass transportation, that is, buses and subways. One responded, “I’m not sure. A well-developed mass transportation system is the key issue. But lampposts are also important for us to walk safely. We do not have lampposts. I do not know which one I must vote for.” The people are perfect at identifying problems.

For those who are wondering how South Korea performs compared to Turkey: Turkey resembles Korea in the 1990s in terms of per capita income, technology content, and female labor force participation. Please note that Turkey and Korea were at the same level in the 1980s. Then, Korea advanced to the core of civilization while we fell behind. They did the right thing, but we messed up. If you are proud of İstinye Park in Istanbul, Seoul is entirely designed like that. I felt like a loser during my stay there. I felt ashamed on behalf of all of our leaders since the 1980s. In Seoul, I felt like I was in a European city, at the heart of civilization. As soon as I stood on the sidewalks of Ankara, however, I was back in the Middle East. Maybe we can pass the hat around and take Ankara’s mayor Melih Gökçek to Seoul.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 23.03.2012