In the photo above, Zuckerberg is shaking hands with former French President Sarkozy. Which one do you think looks like the president?

Mark Zuckerberg is only 29 years old, which is the average age in Turkey. He founded Facebook as a college student, which later went public and made him a billionaire. His is currently valued at about $14 billion and  is the CEO of Facebook. The company that you all know, the one that has “move fast, break things” posters on its walls. These kinds of companies founded by young innovators change the rules. That’s what distinguishes our era. The other day I found myself thinking whether Mark Zuckerberg would go to the Gezi Park protests if he were in Turkey. I believe he would. Let me tell you why.

I would like to present three pieces of evidence and let you decide. First, it appears that 29 is the age of politicization. If you are 29 and relatively well off, you take up a cause. At least that’s what has happened with Zuckerberg. In the early 2011, Cisco CEO John Chambers, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had dinner with President Obama. During the dinner, Chambers proposed a repatriation tax exemption to allow American companies to pay lower taxes on overseas profits if they brought them back to the United States. Steve Jobs reiterated his demand for paving the way for foreign students who studied engineering in America to get working permits easier. Zuckerberg first wondered why they were after the options that are most profitable for their industries rather than those of best interest of America. He later brought his friends together and explained to them the importance of designing a political agenda beneficial for both, the people of the United States as well as the industry.

This assessment process laid the foundation of the lobbying group called FWD.US. The group aims to support a comprehensive immigration reform for the US in order to facilitate the employment of foreigners by American companies. The group involved all Silicon Valley companies in order to exploit a bigger and richer pool of skills. They argued that immigration to the US must gain pace to make immigrants as well as America richer. Meanwhile, the sector benefits from the process. India, for instance, cannot catch up with China in growth, since as the analyses suggest that the latter has by far the better-educated human capital. If it takes time to put in action well-educated generations, you should attract well-educated foreigners.

Turkey’s population is composed of seventh-grade dropouts while the Gezi Park protestors raise the average to eleventh grade – it is still low, though. Turkey has a long way to take in terms of education. One way of compensation might be to design a healthy immigration policy. Seventh-grade dropouts are not what it takes to make the leap to high-tech production. This is especially the case since we are talking about a country which, far from attracting foreigners, is losing its well-educated generations to the brain drain. Let this be the second evidence.

The third one is hidden in the above photo of Zuckerberg shaking hands with Sarkozy. Which one in the photo do you think looks like an executive? That’s the very picture that the politics has to comprehend.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 21.06.2013