To be able to assess the countries of the region with a different perspective, Turkey has to compile data. You cannot easily become the order-setter by just saying it.

Mango is a Spanish clothing design and manufacturing company, founded in 1984. Currently it has 2494 stores worldwide; 80 in Turkey and only 5 in Egypt. Turkey’s and Egypt’s populations are 75 million and 80 million, respectively. But there are a significantly higher number of Mango stores in Turkey. Moreover, the working styles of the stores in the two countries are different. A couple of days ago, I said, “there are two types of countries: those that enrich their populations and those that cannot.” The people living in the former are generally more integrated into the rest of the world. They go shop in any one of the 2494 Mango stores that have renewed their window displays. Today, let me proceed from here.

I believe that Turkey has to see the countries of its region from a different perspective. Until today, Turkey’s perspective has concentrated rather on the politics and security, with a focus directly on Turkey per se. Who can support Turkey in its struggle against the PKK? Who can cooperate with Turkey for security matters? Who can support Turkey’s stance in a given matter? With the capital accumulation process in the country, Turkey is at the outset of a new era in which commercial priorities also matter. In the past, we used to concentrate more on political and security-related issues. Today, we have to shift the focus towards commercial and economic ones.  When doing this, Turkey has to ask itself, “How Egypt can prosper?” or “How can the middle class grow?” We have to ponder their issues, not ours. Yet, Turkey is just crawling on this account.

From this angle, how nations prosper becomes even more important. So does generating relevant indicators. Last week I mentioned that lately I have been obsessed with a rather simple indicator. If you ask me, number of automobiles per 1000 people in a country gives valuable insights on middle class’s development adventure in that country. You need to have a traceable indicator particularly concerning countries with a weak statistics generating capacity.

So, let me refer to last week’s arguments: In the 1960s in Turkey, there were 4 motor vehicles per 1000 people. In  the 1980s, major reforms came. In 2003, there were 96 cars per every 1000 people and in 2009 the number of motor vehicles per 1000 people increased to 142. In the 1960s, Egypt also had 4 motor vehicles per 1000 people. By 2009, the number in Egypt reached to 43 compared to Turkey’s 142. Therefore, Turkey outperformed Egypt in enriching the nation and expanding the middle class. In the past, we used to watch Egyptian movies; now they are watching Turkish TV serials. Why? Just to see Istanbul and the lifestyles of the people there, if you ask me. They are monitoring the developments in Turkey with a highly mundane purpose. Turkey changes as the middle class develops, and this is what the Egyptians are monitoring.

It is because Turkey has succeeded in enriching its people that it has 80 Mango stores compared to Egypt’s 5. Moreover, the stores in Egypt are  franchises whereas those in Turkey are owned by the Mango Company. It appears that due to the difficulties of doing business, Egyptians had to take the risk of opening a store while in Turkey the company undertook all the risks as doing business in the country is rather easy. From Turkey’s perspective, this is a favorable picture.

But what is the lesson that the number of motor vehicles per 1000 people and the number of Mango stores in the two countries teach us? To be able to assess the countries of the region from a different perspective, it is important for Turkey to compile data about these countries. You cannot easily become the order-setter by just saying “We are setting the order in our region.” To be able to set the order in the region, you first have to have a concrete idea on the objective and carry out a supporting analysis. And conducting an analysis is not possible unless you have a relevant dataset.

Unfortunately, Turkey is just at the data compilation stage.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 03.07.2012