Turkey now has a Presidential system. One man’s say will disproportionately guide the future of the nation and our collective direction is in his hands. With all due respect to his position and to his mandate, I would like to offer him some advice.
Politically, you are now as strong as a man can be in their own country. I imagine that is both exhilarating and scary. You have been at the pinnacle of politics for half your lifetime and most of ours but now you have the key.
Yet despite that, Turkey suffers from a political malaise. The opposition is unable to reach the people because the media is shut off. And even your own party, the AKP, has lost energy. They have lost their link to the people.
When all political energy is sucked up by one person, by one character, that is anathema to political debate. And no matter how good your political instincts, I really sense you need debate and constructive criticism. Everyone does.
It is important to recognise that some failings of the opposition are not down to you – the CHP’s meltdown is their own problem and it is a challenge they are failing because Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has singularly failed the ultimate test of leadership: knowing when to step down.
But there is one political move that Turkey would truly benefit from: making peace with the millions of Kurds who are as much of the country’s future as the rest of the nation.
Selahattin Demirtaş received more votes in jail than most politicians would dream of receiving in a lifetime. It is time either to charge him with evidence-backed accusations or to let him go.
If the Turks and the Kurds cannot live in peace together, neither will ever be happy. Now that you have the power, I would truly advise that the time has come to close that wound, whatever your new partners, the MHP, may say.
There are other moves (and you will have heard this constantly) but it is important to reiterate. Without a freer media, society cannot flourish. Without freedom of expression, even if it is in complete opposition to your own beliefs, no society can truly reach its potential.
Youth will find other, more destructive, ways to express themselves. Political opponents will seek backroom intrigue and deals over dialogue. The state will eventually grind to a halt if there is no expression because the human soul needs that outlet. Just look at Iran.
Even with all of your new power, you will need to delegate. For that, you will need people to act all across the nation and they will also need to believe in their purpose. Expression and argument is a part of execution otherwise just have an army.
And so let’s talk about the economy because it links to this. My sense is that your advisers have misunderstood or have incorrectly explained what is happening right now. It is unhealthy to call people who advise other routes “economic terrorists’.
Turkey has, under your leadership, experienced some immensely dynamic changes. I have spoken to people in Anatolia who have gone from ramshackle wooden homes to state-of-the-art luxury housing.
They will be forever grateful for that. Turkey has also benefitted from the incredible advances in technology that have allowed even the poorest to have access to phones, white goods, digital TVs and the like. An open Turkey is good because it allows that access to tech.
Yet, there is something broken in the economic structure which has to be fixed. The entire system is based on credit and consumption and there seems to be very little happening on the creative and productive side.
Emerging markets grew so much in the period that you have ruled (Turkey included) because they started from a low base, money was cheap and they had young, dynamic populations.
Those conditions don’t exist anymore. From now on, economic growth will come from creativity, from technology, from any industry in which there is value-add. By that, I mean human capital. The value of the labour and minds that can add to the machines.
The route that Turkey is pursuing right now is economic suicide. If the state continues to try to fill its productivity gap with public money, the state itself will eventually collapse. Construction has a terrible long-term multiplier. We have to find other solutions.
Most economic advisers will talk about monetary and fiscal policy. That is part of the solution, of course, but I promise you, if OHAL were to end tomorrow, if the rhetoric were to be calmed down, the markets would reward it richly.
So let’s move to talking about social issues. I wrote earlier about value-add industries and their importance in the global economy. I hope you read some of the responses to Hilal Kaplan earlier today. They were mostly about education.
Without education, Turkey will forever be stuck. And by education, I mean science, maths and IT but I also mean creative education. Kids today are different and so is the world in which they are growing up. Let me explain.
You inherited a terrible approach to education which relied on rote learning. My parents had that education and so do kids now. But education is no longer about knowing. It is about teaching about how to know. About how to learn.
If you were to invest in tech-based education as well as a critically-based system, Turkey could fly. Everywhere around the world, Turks are at the forefront of learning. We are a good people with good minds. That should continue at home.
There are other social issues though, all of which have shared blame. Turkey remains divided and I have to say that your leadership style has played a role in that. But the other side also has a share of the blame.
When I saw that video of some idiot giving your supporter a toothbrush, I felt awful. It was demeaning, it was rude, it was unnecessary. I wish that the educated elite in Turkey could be better sometimes and I hope they will be in the future.
Nonetheless, I think you and your movement share some of the blame. Your own Justice Minister today talked about “real ownership” of the nation. That is unfair to the very concept of Turkishness and citizenship. Are we all not in the same boat?
If I can finish with the legal side, here I can't be as clear. You now have more power over the judiciary than any other person in the history of the state. I hope you use that responsibility well.
I do not have access to what you know about the various court cases that impact the lives of so many millions of people. Perhaps intelligence has evidence that the public cannot see.
I still think that a truth and reconciliation approach benefits society, even through the most destructive of societal breakdowns. Most of those people surely don’t threaten the very basis of society? Does it benefit us to have so many full jails?
As long as Turkey is known as a jailer of journalists and academics, it will never truly burgeon. Honestly, life is much better with a plurality of voices and with a society where everyone can co-exist.
I realise Turkey cannot be Norway or Switzerland. But we have to be better, right? How will we ever be happy if we constantly fight? If we constantly see enemies and threats. how will we ever grow as a society or as individuals in that society?
Even as I write this, I fear that next time I come to Turkey I might be arrested for… well, I don’t even know but for something or other. I know (or hope) I won’t but that sense of fear cannot and will not help us.
So, dear President, I congratulate you. I wish you success because the country is now defined by your success. But I also hope that you change things. Because we need change. We need to change a lot.
