GÜVEN SAK

Imagine a Syria with no Americans GÜVEN SAK

Imagine a Syria with no Americans

Have you heard the most recent bit of presidential wisdom from Donald Trump? “We are knocking the hell out of ISIS,” boasted the triumphant president on March 29. “We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it.”

March 30 2018
From Japan to China-bashing GÜVEN SAK

From Japan to China-bashing

I see two emerging trends. One is in the West, the other is in China. I was at a meeting in Mumbai this week. Everybody there was more interested in the power consolidation in China than in the disarray in Washington. President Donald Trump, who has never been accountable to a board of directors in his life, is running the U.S. government like a private company. We have a drunk sitting in the driving seat of the U.S. government. Let me tell you what that feels like to a Turk in Mumbai.

March 16 2018
The gender gap is narrowing in Turkey GÜVEN SAK

The gender gap is narrowing in Turkey

Last week, the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) announced its third Gender Inequality Scorecard, with the particular aim of raising awareness about gender inequality in the Turkish countryside. The results were surprising this year, showing significant improvement across the board in gender equality.

March 09 2018
Turkey needs more global value chains GÜVEN SAK

Turkey needs more global value chains

Turkey’s industrial transformation started in the early 1980s. Unlike many of its Middle Eastern neighbors, Turkey has no natural resources, so it had to organize its society around producing things others would want to buy.

February 23 2018
Higher growth, higher misery in Turkey GÜVEN SAK

Higher growth, higher misery in Turkey

Turkey’s economy grew by 11.1 percent in the third quarter of 2017. That’s the highest figure since 2014. Yet, the misery index, found simply by summing up the inflation rate and unemployment rate, has reached 21.2 percent. That figure, in turn, is at its highest since 2004. So, higher growth has made Turkey even more miserable. Why?

February 16 2018
Turkey and NATO: 45 years ago, 45 years later GÜVEN SAK

Turkey and NATO: 45 years ago, 45 years later

NATO was established in 1949. Turkey and Greece became members in 1952. If there was no NATO at the time, Ankara would have had to invent it. Russia was breathing down Turkey’s neck and the country needed Western allies to keep it in check. Turkey paid for that protection in blood. Prior to Ankara’s NATO accession, a 5,000-strong Turkish brigade was shipped off to fight in the Korean War in 1950 and 741 of them died. 

February 09 2018
Russian-Turkish relations and the dark underbelly of cryptocurrency GÜVEN SAK

Russian-Turkish relations and the dark underbelly of cryptocurrency

Russian-Turkish relations were in the news again last week. But this time it was different. It was not about S-400s, sanctions or secondary sanctions, or even about the Syrian Civil War.

February 02 2018
Is Turkey going back to square one after 40 years GÜVEN SAK

Is Turkey going back to square one after 40 years?

Turkey has transformed itself into a dynamic industrial country from a sleepy agrarian society. Much of the transformation is owed to Turgut Özal’s reforms in the 1980s. Then the Customs Union with the EU in 1996 turned Turkey into a mid-tech industrial country.

January 19 2018
The year 2007 was a perfect storm for Turkey GÜVEN SAK

The year 2007 was a perfect storm for Turkey

“Countries don’t disappear, it has been said, but sometimes they encounter perfect storms,” wrote Jorge Castaneda, a Mexican politician and academic, the other day in the New York Times.

January 12 2018