Turkey on the Edge

Turkey is NOT a "a big, functioning, democratic Muslim state that could be an example to the rest of the Middle East". Turkey is a hysterical country that appears to be secular when viewed from abroad, but where the government forces the mainstream Sunni Islam down the throats of a large Alevite Shia minority and where its multiple religious and ethnic minorities suffer harrassment and restrictions. Turkey may look democratic, but many parties are still illegal and the decisions of the democratically elected government are subject to approval by the all powerful military. You write that "Turkey has the biggest and arguably one of the toughest armies in Europe". Big it definitely is. But Turkey's army has never proven its might in a real war; it has rather proven its might by illegally occupying the defenseless mini-state of Cyprus as well as against its own citizens, namely the Kurds, who were ethnically cleansed from their homelands to major Turkish cities in an effort to force them into the Turkish mainstream. Diyarbakir, a city in the SE, used to have a population of 400,000 in 1990, which swelled up to 1.5 millions in 1997, after the Turkish Military that you so praise conducted the ethnic cleansing of Turkey's own Kurds! That's 275% more people in just 7 years!
By praising Turkey one does not serve the truth and frustrates millions of belabored underdogs within Turkey. It is also a great offense to other successful Muslim democracies who unlike Turkey are genuine democracies, tolerant of various ethnic and religious groups and who do not aggress their neighbors, such as Indonesia.

Dear Cenk,

Which data are you talking about? The one that is published on the Turkish government web sites?

If you are talking about those reports, these reports already sanitized and normalized by certain ???reputable??? auditing and accounting firms! The firms that operate under the same rules of organizations, which audited and valued Enron, Nortel, AGF, Citi Bank and etc.

Once upon a time these corporation???s balance sheets and market value were unbelievably good. While Nortel was practically bankrupt, their auditors and accountants were writing extremely good financial reports for shareholders.

Do you know what happened to those companies? What makes Turkey situation so different from those companies? They tempered their financial reports by the help of reputable auditors and accounting companies to get more loans, credits etc.

Please do look at the nature of the things, look at the nature, what Turkey takes and what it returns!

Turkish economy is now experiencing a slowdown not a suffering because of not being managed badly instead a world wide economical recession. Biggs and Soner Cagaptay try to damage Turkey image abroad and Turkish economy. As I wrote my earlier comment, IMF didn't and can't do good for Turkey as in 2001 crisis. Biggs draw an image that Turkey is on the verge on the collapse but look at real figures in June 2009 "http://www.hazine.gov.tr/irj/go/km/docs/documents/Treasury%20Web/Statistics/Economic%20Indicators/egosterge/Sunumlar/Ekonomi_Sunumu_ENG.pdf" Also his article seems to me so contradictory or try to manipulate Turkish public opinion: Turkey on the edge of collapse and full-rising power if it saves itself from this crisis with IMF help. is this a joke? with IMF help Turkey is rising power, without it "nothing".

Indeed around 60 % of the Turkish people in Turkey think that the economy is doing OKAY, and the AKP government is managing the situation. The other 40 % has been screaming that the future of their grandsons and granddaughters has already been ???sold- to lending organizations, and accumulated debt by putting the burden on their 3rd even 4th generations.

Of course the concerned 40 % is not the favourite crowd of the current government AKP and the Prime Minister Mr.Erdogan. The Prime Minister Mr.Erdogan is not also concerned and interested in the views of this 40 %. Mr.Erdogan knows very well that the ???happy??? 60 % is his target population group and he keeps working with that group.

The target group of Mr.Erdogan can also be further categorized as 10 % who fill their coffers with help from Mr.Erdogan and AKP, and 50 % who lives below the minimal life standard conditions and no hope for the future except what the government can offer to them.

For the 10 % who fill their coffers with help from Mr.Erdogan, there is no problem with the economy in Turkey. They see, think and say: Yeah, there have been some issues with the economy, but hey, is this not the global issue? Praise to God, it will be resolved when it is solved.

For 50 % who lives below the minimal life standard conditions, there is no such thing economy. What is the objective of this group is to close the day with a piece of bread on their table and praise to God, everything will be OK for tomorrow. No hopes, no expectations for the future, no money in the bank, no shares in stock market, no private retirement plan, no insurance plan, etc. They are more concern with the issues of the heaven or the hell or covering their women???s had or should they step out their house with right foot or with left foot.

This is the group Mr.Erdogan loves and focuses on keeping them at bay with injecting the values of regressive Mohammedanism into the minds of the group. Mr.Erdogan accomplishes this by the help of local or national religio-politic interests groups called -Tarikat-s. These local and national religio-politic interests groups propagates and promotes regressive Mohammedanism in their respective areas.

Thus, by being fed with the ideas of regressive Mohammedanism, which eradicates reasoning and rational thinking, the 50 % cares about more about their live in the other world than the world and future of their generations.

The concerned 40 % is not in Mr.Erdogan???s radar screen due to the fact that they see things are not going well. Thus, the 40 % is the ???enemy of ??? Mr.Erdogan, democracy, liberalism, human rights and etc. Also form the perspective of Mr.Erdogan the 40 % is also plots against Mr.Erdogan and his party by planning and supporting Military coups, trying to promote ideas based on reasoning and rationalistic values.

yes of course we have some economical problems in turkey. but as you see it is not considered so important among turkish people.we have a very strong banking system and we learned how to fight against economic crisis.you and your supporters will not be able to effect us in a bad way.we know what to be done.

Turkish Economy. Real figures.

http://www.hazine.gov.tr/irj/go/km/docs/documents/Treasury%20Web/Statistics/Economic%20Indicators/egosterge/Sunumlar/Ekonomi_Sunumu_ENG.pdf

You have wrong information about the election time in Turkey. Turkey is not face with an election in 12 months period. The regular election time is in 2 years. Because of this fact, your some conclusions (i.e. wise gambling) remain supportless.

I aware that some of your articles about high importance affairs of Turkey, since 2-3 months, lack of sound pillars because of the not knowing the facts with all respects. Why don???t you recruit more researcher and more successful correspondents for Turkey.
Cenk, Ankara

Whether Turkey gets help form the IMF or not Turkey is financially a bankrupt country. No matter what type of accounting tricks used to present the economical figures to show Turkey???s economy is doing well, the following facts on Turkey???s economy shows us the real picture.
Here some facts on Turkey???s economy:
1. Foreign trade: In 2008 exports (fob) amounted to US$140.8bn, while imports (fob) were US$193.9bn, leaving a trade deficit of US$53.1bn. The export figures include estimates of earnings from so-called "suitcase trade".
2. External Debt: ~US$280bn Public, ~US$250bn Private, ~Total=530bn
3. Interest Rates for Foreign debt: 18 % (No other country in the world borrows money with such a high rate!
4. When AKP got the power the external debt was around US$40bn.
5. Unemployment rate is around 14 % (official), 30 % real on the street
6. Corruption is widespread, and no tax reform has been introduced
7. Unregistered transactions in the economy 70 %
8. No improvements in the process of opening a business, providing supports for it (roads, communicators, custom regulations, etc.,
As easily can be seen form the data given above, no one or country can sustain development and progress in such conditions.

Turkey is, unfortunately, economically bankrupt country. The governing party AKP knows this fact very well and only way to continue with the government is to draw people???s attention to different directions to keep people occupied with the ???other??? world???s issues.
The mechanism for this for rural part of the country and rural areas is to polish and propagate the regressive Mohammedanism, and in the cities and urban areas is to create imaginary terrorist organizations, military coup plans, paranoid suspicions such as latest ???document??? case, crying victim, and etc. All these methods are also used to silence the opposition, intellectuals, academicians, writers, thinkers, activists who realize that Turkey???s economy is in irreparable state, and regressive Mohammedanism ideology taking over all institutions of Turkey.

I think, Turkey doesn't need to IMF help. We have enough resources and management capabilities to use them. Government do its job well.That's why we are not affected by the crisis that damaged world's biggest economies. Furthermore, because of IMF recipes we suffered a big economical crisis in 2001 (its effect was much more bigger than current one, destroyed about 25% of Turkish purchasing power-even the government at that time almost couldn't afford to pay wages). So we should try to manage crisis ourselves.
When we look at Biggs's talk about the future of Turkey, I see he well understand the brilliance of Turkish development. "Nominal GDP expansion of 10 percent is not unrealistic." is a good anticipation but I don't understand why he draw a very bad picture with the title "Turkish economy suffers" in the first part of the article. I suspect, these are the manipulation of Turkish public opinion especially I see how much importance Turkish local media gives to this article and generally all Newsweek articles about Turkey. (today in many Turkish newspapers, I see this news)

k