While Turkey has yet to deal with the issues brought by the industrial revolution, the questions raised by the ICT response are already waiting to be answered.

The industrial revolution changed our lives entirely. Have you ever thought about it? We first settled in urban areas. Waste generation increased. In 1900, when only 13 percent of the population, corresponding to 220 million people, lived in cities, daily waste generation was around 300,000 tons. As of 2000, the number of urban residents reached 2.9 billion accounting for 49 percent of the world population and the amount of waste generated increased to three million tons per day. The World Bank revised its estimate up to 3.1 million tons per day and the number is expected to reach six million by 2025. This is congruent with a 5000-kilometer-convoy of waste collection vehicles. I mean, that is a lot! The industrial revolution has raised urban management as an issue: feeding the population, arranging mass transportation so that their commute takes an hour at most, collecting the garbage, maintaining electricity supply, etc.

Just like the industrial revolution ushered in a waste generation, the ICT (information and communication technologies) revolution has brought a data generation. About 90 percent of the data available today were generated in the last two or three years. It was also two to three years ago that Steve Jobs brought the iPad into our lives. I strived to learn how to use this device that my niece Ela uses competently. We did not have Twitter, and  Facebook was trying to emerge out of a few university campuses. Today hundreds of millions of people use these products. They generate a large pool of data every day. Yesterday, only the lucky few had the chance to leave a mark in this world. Today data generation is completely democratized. You can follow anyone’s opinions on any issue. Even sharks are on Twitter now, as I said the other day. What is more, the mavens of the ICT world estimate that by 2020, the size of the global data pool will be 50 times what it is today. Waste generation doubled in about 25 to 30 years; data generation grows much faster.

Urbanization and growing waste generation were critical issues in urban management in the twentieth century. Turkey has yet to duly perform these tasks. Urban managers are, of course, doing their utmost to succeed; we have to give them their due. But the condition of Turkey’s cities shows that Turkey has still yet to check off last century’s to-do list. Some municipalities in Turkey actually make remarkable and exciting change happen. For instance, they give weight to constructing bicycle paths. But, does this make Turkish cities more livable, and pedestrian- and child-friendly? Not really. The other day I received an e-mail from a reader. He was telling how he first had to drive to the Bostancı coast road in order to cycle on Istanbul’s Anatolian side. I remember receiving another e-mail that complained about how in order to jog in Turkey, you first have to drive to a decent jogging path. If it were in London, for instance, you could start jogging as soon as you left the apartment. Bicycle paths have recently started to spread in Turkish cities. This does not help them to become decent twenty-first-century cities, however, because you have to drive in your car to the cycling path with your bicycle in the trunk. A person who is committed to cycling for a car-free life first has to have a car. Does this make sense to you? The twentieth century is over; but Turkey’s municipalities are still hanging on to the remains of it.

While Turkey has yet to deal with the issues brought by the industrial revolution, the questions raised by the ICT response are already waiting to be answered. Turkey needs to handle the data management issue even before it figures out how to run cities with its current administrative capacity. Data management will become one of the most productive fields on earth in the coming years. It will feed innovation processes. Singapore, which has taken big data management seriously, seems to have started working to become one of the best in the field by 2015. Turkey, meanwhile, is struggling to decide in which field it should start making an innovation. This really upsets me.

Why? Despite almost 15 years having passed since the twenty-first century began, Turkey is struggling with the issues of the twentieth century using the management mentality of the nineteenth century. It is struggling in the midst of the middle-income trap. The clock is ticking.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 10.01.2014