Esen Çağlar / Commentary

"If Mark Zuckerberg had not been born in New York but in Istanbul, he would now probably be brooding over when and how to fulfill his mandatory military service. In a previous commentary [1], I tried to portray how the Turkish entrepreneurship ecosystem is far from offering young people opportunities similar to those that Zuckerberg enjoyed in the US. I see now that I missed one important element: mandatory military service.

...

You might ask about the correlation between military service and entrepreneurship, or creativity. I have no answer to that. How about this one though: If the Zuckerbergs of the world [2] lived in Turkey, how would they choose to fulfill their national service?..."

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