In the current era where growth is indexed to ideas, Turkey needs creative minds and an infrastructure to protect their products.

The other day I cited the European Union’s Innovation Union Scoreboard. The new version of the study covers Turkey as well as 27 EU countries. They are grouped in four categories: innovation leaders, innovation followers, moderate innovators, and modest innovators. Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Latvia are in the fourth category, which is more like the losers' category. So, why have we always been a loser? I think that prosperity cannot exist in the absence of education and justice. Restructuring the ministries of education and justice should be among the priorities of the growth strategy. Let me emphasize this while preparations for the new five-year development plan are being made.

Some of you might react, saying, “Make up your mind already! Is Turkey a rising star or a permanent member of the losers' club?” The answer is that it depends on your perspective. From below, Turkey is a rising star. The statement “Turkey is an industrial giant,” which I heard in Baghdad in 2003 and actually was very surprised to hear, can be read from this perspective. Turkey is an industrial giant in the eyes of the vast majority of its southern neighbors. From above, however, Turkey is at the bottom. Compared to Israel, another southern neighbor, Turkey is not even close to being an industrial giant. They are developing machines that can move through blood vessels while we are unable to built train locomotives. What is the key to growth in today’s world? To create the ability to develop machines that can crawl through your veins. This is the precondition to enhancing per capita income from $10,000 to $25,000. 

The lack of human resources

And now the Innovation Union Scoreboard study: what are the components that put Turkey below the average? The lack of human resources, to begin with. I will skip this issue since I have addressed it several times before. The second factor is that scientific research cannot be put into practice as firms are reluctant. For instance, the number of scientific publications has been increasing while the number of patents has not as much. A TEPAV study revealed the same result for Ankara: the number of academic publications was increasing rapidly thanks to local universities, but the city lagged behind concerning the number of patents. I have started to think that this second factor relates not to the implementation process or to cooperation between university and industry, but to the lack of protection of intellectual property rights. If you are aiming to commercialize an invention, you better establish your company in a developing country. This way, you will be under the protection of a functional justice system. The twenty-first century will be the time of countries that have functional justice systems. They will just sit down and wait for the talent to come. In fact, they already are doing this. From this perspective, China’s chances are low, and America’s chances are high.

A functional justice system actually means a justice system able to make verdicts in a timely manner. We all know that because of operational problems, Turkey’s judicial system is almost dysfunctional. This realization is the one and only effective outcome of the high-profile lawsuits such as Ergenekon and Sledge Hammer. The World Justice Project has been releasing comparative data on this issue. Why is Turkey’s judicial system dysfunctional? Reading the findings on Turkey from a comparative perspective, I derived three conclusions for Turkey: first, the law codes are amended frequently and thus are unreliable and unstable. Second, judgment processes are not reliable as they are highly open to political intervention. Third, the system is unable to delivery a verdict in an efficient and timely manner. Fourth, the right to privacy is violated blatantly. Fifth, Turkey lacks check and balance mechanisms. The Project has identified these having analyzed the state of justice in 66 countries. Turkey is not doing well. 

Election acrobats

So, what do these say? Turkey needs a new constitution, a new administrative design, a new system of government that can control the leader tutelage, and justice. In the current era where growth is indexed to ideas, Turkey needs creative minds and an infrastructure to protect their products. Otherwise, growth beyond 3 percent cannot be attained with the current institutional infrastructure.

As if we don’t have enough on our plate for the twenty-first century, we are preoccupied with the issues of the nineteenth century, like the Kurdish issue.  Parliament speaker Cemil Çiçek is showing the way out, but no one is considering it. All the election acrobats can think is “why the hell did he say that?”

Turkey has always been a loser, a strong candidate for permanent membership in the losers' club because of the acrobats who care only about the elections ahead.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 31.08.2012