Why Turkey’s transformation is confusing

I have been hearing two seemingly contradictory tales about Turkey’s transformation lately. One ends with the AKP’s election victory in 2002, while the other starts with it. Both are wrong. Turkish history is all but one continuum, if you ask me. Without President Özal’s legacy pre-2002, we would not have had President Erdoğan post-2002. Even the epistemological break with the establishment of the Republic was hatched in the late Ottoman period. It was soldiers of the empire who led the Liberation War and shaped the events that changed Turkey starting from 1919. It was them who rejected the Sevres agreement, a Turkish Versailles. The path breaking reforms of the Republic were born of the dreams of the Ottoman intelligentsia, and not only among those in Istanbul but also those in Cairo. Yet, economic and social transformation only happened in Anatolia, and not on the Nile. Why not? Our founding fathers were realists, if you ask me, shaped by the crucible of a crumbling empire. The Egyptians had no comparable experience.

But why these conflicting tales? Forget about current events. Just try to imagine the deep political, social and economic transformation in Asia Minor after the Republic. Turkey, a country without oil in the Middle East, has transformed itself from a low income to a middle income country. And it did so within the span of one lifetime. My lifetime. I was born in the early 1960s, when 70% of Turks lived in rural areas. It didn’t change much at first, hovering around %60 in the early 1980s. Then, the country’s rural population halved through rapid industrialization. It now stands below 30% and will most likely dwindle further in the coming years, but it is near its end.

I find this to be a remarkable achievement. To be sure, Turkey is no Asian miracle, yet when it comes to urbanization, it does cut a miraculous figure. These two conflicting images of Turkey are very much related to the rapid pace of this transformation. Yes, Turkey has been on a growth spurt since 2002, but that cannot be thought of separately from its blitz-urbanization a few decades earlier.

This will also explain some of the inconsistencies we see in Turkey today. Here we have a population that is around 75% urbanized, yet only about 50% have access to the internet. Turkey’s first transformation story hasn’t ended while the second is already well on its way.

Imperfect as it may be, that is no trivial thing. I was looking at the comparative governance indicators graph compiled by World Bank experts for the “Turkey’s Transformations” report. Just compare Turkey with the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries. Turkey is MENA’s champion in five different governance indicators ranging from accountability to corruption. Look at Egypt for example. According to World Bank data, Egypt and Turkey had the same 44% urbanization rate in the early 1980s. Egypt is still at 43%, while Turkey is past 70% now. Vast areas of Turkey stand transformed, while Egypt remains Egypt. We somehow achieved that mysterious thing that politicians always promise but rarely ever deliver: change. That may explain Turkey’s presumed soft power in the region. It may also help explain the conflicting views of Turkey’s transformation.

Now, please take another look at the graph. If you compare Turkey to Korea, or with the OECD average, it is severely underperforming in selected governance indicators. In that sense, we are a country suffocating to live in the 21st century.

Remember the old Chinese saying “When you start climbing the mountain, your perspective changes.” Transformation is a dizzying process, without clear beginning and endpoints. It will take time to reach clarity.

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