North and South Korea were able to settle matters much more quickly than Israel, Palestine, and Turkey were able to find a compromise.

If you travel south for about two hours of North Korea's capital of Pyongyang, you will arrive at the Kaesong Industrial Region, before the demilitarized zone. Or, if you travel north from Seoul, you will arrive in Kaesong, right after the demilitarized zone, in aboutc an hour. North Korea and South Korea just hate each other. They occasionally sink each other’s ships or crash each other’s planes. But around 50,000 North Koreans as well as a thousand South Koreans go to the Kaesong Industrial Region every day to work for South Korean companies. The Region, which became operational during Kim Jong-il’s time, is approximately 65 square meters in size.

The Kaesong Industrial Region is like an island within North Korea. Just like China’s special economic zones. The rules of the managing company, rather than the laws of North Korea, are applicable within the region. The region implies access by South Korean companies to North Korea’s cheap and qualified labor. Some call this slave labor. But please note that thanks to Kaesongs, wages will go up. The region makes it possible for South Korean companies to withstand Chinese competition. From the perspective of the North Korean government, it is an opportunity for employment and skills-development for citizens. The South provides electricity and the North provides water.

Hearing the story of the Kaesong Industrial Region was the most pleasant moment for me at Korea’s Ministry of Unification in Seoul last year. The idea had been developed in 2002, at the same time as the idea to establish a Turkish industrial zone in Palestine was raised by Turkey. Do you remember the Palestine special industrial zone project led by the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey and carried out by TEPAV? I have never forgotten about it. I am still on it, actually. Anyway, the Kaesong Industrial Region became operable in 2005. On the other hand, the initiative to establish an industrial zone in Palestine was taken a step further in 2010 when a fenced-in parcel of 93 hectares was chosen on the Jenin borderline. The TOBB-BİS company was asked to make the Jenin Industrial Estate operational, a task that Germany has failed to accomplish for a decade.

North and South Korea were able to settle matters much more quickly than Israel, Palestine, and Turkey were able to find a compromise. Why? Because it is harder to harmonize politics when you have three countries instead of two. In the case of the Jenin Industrial Estate, a problem about the third party unveils whenever the other two reach an agreement. For instance, Israel and Palestine had settled on a mutual solution when we learned that Turkey had suspended its relations with Israel. Turkey’s conflict with Israel affects Turkey’s support of the Palestinian government and the Palestinian resistance negatively. In this geography, politics definitely supersede economics. Politics prevent us from noticing the changing meaning of the Palestinian resistance. It used to be enough to rise up and chant. Today the key priority is to make sure that those who have risen have a self-sufficient administrative and economic capacity.

If you consider countries as pools of talents, one way to tap the pool of another country might be to establish a special economic zone there. Turkey must start doing serious thinking about initiating economic cooperation projects of this type in Northern Iraq, Nakhichevan, and Armenia. This is one way to make Turkey a country through which value chains pass.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 01.03.2013