Oh God! How do I make this mistake? How did I miss the leading indicator showing that Turkey is about to leave behind the economic crisis? I apologize to you all. But let me go back in time to explain clearly why I apologized.
13 August 2006, a highly important date. It is the date when the estimable contributions of the 'writer of this commentary' to the literature of leading indicators came to light. This was what I said: "There is no doubt that we can assess various indicators to have an idea on the dimension of the economic crisis or whether or not the crisis is overcome. I have to admit; one of the indicators we looked at with a friend (I will not tell the name) in the 2001 crisis was 'Tex-Zagor index'. You can call it a 'comic book index'."
Old crisis - old indicator
I am sure that only a few of you have forgotten about such estimable contribution, but I will remind you about it anyway. The indicator worked like this: - quoted from the mentioned commentary - "These comic books disappeared with the spread of the crisis, at the most exciting part of the adventure. This way freed from the hum and haw of 'I would like to buy a yogurt, bread, a Radikal daily and that comic book for my kids'. After all, we were 'grownups'. Yet, we learned that the hum and how did not work; the bookstall gay told my wife 'new issue of the comic books your husband read is available'.
Then, suddenly those comic books started to mushroom: different series with the same characters with titles like classical, legendary or special. What is more, new issues of the series not published during the crisis were even published (I would like to thank to the publisher). Thank God, we eventually overcame the economic crisis."
Enough with the quotations. In the meanwhile, I had to change my comic book bookstall, for two reasons. First, the bookstall is located in a small market in the building complex I live in. Next to it, grocer, butcher, and delicatessen are located. TV is constantly open especially in the butcher's shop and they watch economics channel. They have seen the 'writer of this commentary' talking through his hat on the economics channels. Every time I visit them, they go into quite deep subjects asking "How does euro-dollar parity develop? What will China do?" I earned sort of a reputation in the market of the complex. I on purpose go there in rush hours so that there will be audience when they start asking me questions. However, this came together with a risk: They can see me leaving the bookstall, which is next to the butcher, with comic books. So, I did not want to lose the street credit. This is the first reason why I changed the bookstall where I buy comic books.
Second reason is also based on a similar psychological state. Bookstalls do not contain enough materials to camouflage the comic books. How many newspapers, loafs of breads or cartoons of milk can I buy? What is more, comic books are easily noticed with the colors. Moreover, as I also mentioned before, the bookstall guy uncovered the secret. Therefore going to the book store, which is a bit farther, appeared as a good option. However, problems appear there as well: I also have a passion for detective stories. If you buy both comic books and detective books, you will again need camouflage. So I buy a couple of books on economy, novels or anything else I can find. Thus, bookstore bills have gone up!
New crisis - new indicator
Anyway, I will not bore you with my problems and return to our crisis indicator. After a long vacation and two business trips following the vacation, I did not get the change to visit the book store in August. I rushed to there as soon as I arrived home from the meeting in Brussels I mentioned in my commentary on Thursday. I generally note the last issue of the comic books I read before I go so that I do not buy the same issue again. But sometimes I rush it as I do not have much time. Being my permanent reference books (they are important indicators I you might recall), comic books can be on my worktable, bookshelf or on the bedside. Therefore, I have to search all over the house; but when I do not have much time, I might record the wrong issue. Anyway, the latest issue I noted was the 96th. I went to the bookstore and saw the 100th issue on the shelf. Did not I buy any comic books for the last four months? I only bought the 100th issue to check the issues at home for the second time.
After the control, however, I had to go back to the store. I saw that the publisher started to publish two issues a month. This, my friend, is a clear indicator that Turkey has been overcoming the crisis. I am just sad that I could have told the good news earlier if I had not been on vacations and business trips during August.
Of course you can ask this question: "You sat that the increase in the frequency of publication of comic books indicates that we are overcoming the crisis. OK, but why the publication of the books was not suspended during the crisis as it was in 2001 crisis? How can we believe in the good news?" There is no doubt that this requires in-depth analysis. But my initial hypothesis is this:
This crisis is way different than the 2001 crisis as I have repeated several times. This difference obstructed the recognition of the 2008 crisis. That Turkey did not respond the crisis with economic policies created the 'administrator must certainly know what they do' perception. This further complicated the recognition of the crisis. And the challenges we recognized were assumed to be temporary. As a result, things were done with the same course even during the crisis. Publishers continued to publish comic books in time during the crisis, which was not much recognized or was thought to be temporary. However, when things turned relatively more favorable, they revised their publishing policy and increased the publication frequency.
Therefore, this time our comic book index represents an asymmetrical behavior pattern. Of course we need a couple of other crisis to test this hypothesis. This is how economics is; there is no laboratory where to can carry out experiments. To make experiments, incidents must be repeated...
This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 13.09.2009
