The TTIP engagement between the EU and the US should not be considered just another free trade agreement.

Turkey immediately needs to overcome its domestic agenda and get back to world events. The modus operandi of the beautiful blue planet of ours has been taking new shape. The European Union (EU) and the U.S. decided in June to launch a new process of transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP). This means the investment and doing business climate of the world’s biggest market will be redesigned. We are talking about almost half of the world’s GDP and Turkey’s largest trade partner. This is nor merely a matter of the EU turning on us to side with the US after swindling Turkey into a Customs Union agreement. There is a qualitative difference, if you ask me. A new world order is taking shape, but Turkey seems to be obsessed with domestic everyday debates. I hope we do not miss the agenda. Let me tell you why.

The TTIP engagement between the EU and the US is far from just another free trade agreement. The TTIP, the first negotiations of which will be held this year, is in a way the continuum of the Trans Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP) launched in 2005 and has completed 18 rounds of negotiations. The TPP changed shape as the US decided to include Japan in the negotiations this year. Now they will have the TTIP alongside the TPP, which will create a new investment climate and doing business model that roughly covers two thirds of the world’s GDP. That’s the very development which makes me think that a new world order is taking shape.

In such an atmosphere, countries like Turkey will either engage with this partnership and play by the rules to become a part of the world’s greatest market, or be left out of the market and revise their growth strategies. In this context let me stress that nationalist debates based in China build upon the idea “they want to sabotage our growth process by leaving us out.” The West is in a way trumping its current economic superiority to shape the future economic climate. Is this necessarily bad for us? It depends on the context. For instance, this way, labor rights, prevention of child labor and health regulations will become universal. On the other hand, it will be harder for nation states to design national industrial policy independently. This is the second point.

So, is it certain that those in superior positions will always remain that way? Will the TPP and the TTIP necessarily perpetuate the West’s dominance today in the future? Definitely not. There are three reasons. First, countries like Turkey can get richer by joining the process, not staying out of it. Özal’s reforms have thought Turkey that becoming rich requires being a part of the world. The result of the 2002 election was also brought by this shift of mindsets. Second, the gains from opening up to the world depend on successful identification of the initial conditions for opening up. For the current case, a country decisive to become a part of the world should first do its homework and decide what steps to take. That’s why negotiations are important. Third, Turkey’s transformation in the 1980 was about the industry. So was the content of the Customs Union, thanks to which Turkey has become a medium-technology industrial country. Turkey has got the best of the process as economic analyses indicate. Now it is time to expand liberalization towards the agriculture and services sectors and enhance the competitiveness of the economy as a whole.

Turkey has gotten richer as it acted in tandem with the world system. It should read the TTIP also from this perspective. Turkey should take part in the reshaping of the world. How? I will tell you what I have in mind.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 25.06.2013