GÜVEN SAK

Turkey’s COVID-19 response from the perspective of German business GÜVEN SAK

Turkey’s COVID-19 response from the perspective of German business

Recently, “AHK Türkei,” the Turkish-German Chamber of Industry and Commerce, has announced the results of a survey regarding the business expectations of its members. Fortunately, Turkey is not the only country that AHK, the German Chamber movement, has a dual chamber arrangement with – it has these arrangements with 92 countries. That is how through this survey, we can compare the COVID-19 response of different countries from a commercial perspective. It’s a kind of litmus test for Turkey’s COVID-19 response, and I find the results more than a bit ambivalent. Let me explain.

July 24 2020
Deeper in 2020, slower in 2021 GÜVEN SAK

Deeper in 2020, slower in 2021

“The crisis like no other will have a recovery like no other,” IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said this week. I couldn’t agree more. We have never had a sudden stop in global economic activity like this one. It is only natural that we do not yet have a real idea of how to get out of this mess. For an economist, this is a real-world experiment of planetary scale.

June 26 2020
Throw out the old policy menu GÜVEN SAK

Throw out the old policy menu

Telecommuting is one of the great novelties of our lives in this age of COVID-19. It isn’t that the technology is new of course, but the manner in which we use it definitely is. You can be at a meeting in Riyadh in the morning, participate in a debate in Berlin in the early afternoon, and be in a workshop in Washington, D.C before dinner, all the while staying at home in Ankara. No jet lags, no overnight stays, no hassle at crowded airports. You can participate in the global debate – at times more than it is necessary, as we now have more free time than usual.

June 19 2020
Ready for the second round GÜVEN SAK

Ready for the second round?

We are all getting ready for the second round of the fight between the virus and humanity. The first round was all about “flattening the curve,” meaning that we had to limit contagion through severe physical distancing measures, lockdowns and curfews. The virus has equalized all economies in this first stage, if I may say so. It didn’t matter how rich or poor your country was, your population was vulnerable just the same, and you had to shut down your economy just the same. As Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, put it so elegantly, “It’s the virus, not the usual suspects” that led to the sudden stop in global economic activity.

June 12 2020
The virus and the unicorn GÜVEN SAK

The virus and the unicorn

It was my new year’s wish in 2019 to see the first Turkish unicorn that year, but I was disappointed. These mythical creatures are startup companies with a value of over $1 billion. There was a long list of them created by the venture capital industry all around the world, hailing from developing and developed countries, and yet none had come from Turkey. Finally, last week, Zynga acquired the Istanbul-based Peak Games for $1.8 billion. It was none other than the coronavirus that brought the first unicorn to Turkey.

June 05 2020
A change in the nature of uncertainty GÜVEN SAK

A change in the nature of uncertainty

The COVID-19 induced uncertainty has brought a sudden stop to real economic activity. We needed to slow down the spread of the virus to gain time and get to know the virus better. But now we are finally thinking about living with the virus, as new cases are subsiding. We cannot yet magically lift uncertainty, but we have a better sense of things. We are gradually moving away from the world of complete uncertainty into a world where we can assign probabilities to different eventualities, kind of moving from crisis management to change management. That’s what reopening is to many.

May 22 2020
Total disconnect GÜVEN SAK

Total disconnect

Living in Ankara, I usually have to endure several tiring flights to participate in the events of universities, think tanks and international institutes. That is why the recent shift to virtual events has been a welcome development for me. Last week Fed Chairman Jerome H. Powel participated in one such virtual event at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in DC. He was saying that monetization was not that bad this time around. “The virus is the cause, not the usual suspects — something worth keeping in mind as we respond,” he said. I find this particularly important.

May 15 2020
On the shape of recovery GÜVEN SAK

On the shape of recovery

COVID-19 requires true leadership. Winston Churchill’s words come to mind: “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. You must do what is required.” In the uncharted waters of the fight against coronavirus, that’s what we need to keep in mind.

May 08 2020
Why we aren’t going to be ‘roaring back’ to life GÜVEN SAK

Why we aren’t going to be ‘roaring back’ to life

When asked about the world economy after COVID-19, the U.K.’s Boris Johnson said that there was “absolutely no reason why economies worldwide should not come roaring back.” This was an extraordinary statement, and the prime minister obliged his audience with an explanation: “This is unlike 2008, there isn’t a systematic problem within the economy.” I disagree.

May 01 2020