I was in Tehran recently on a day trip. There was a fresh feeling in the air, a kind of happiness that bubbles over and makes you anxious. It’s as if Iran is about to enter get married to globalization, it’s the night before, and the country has a collective bellyache.
All hotels were fully booked. I had trouble finding a room with last-minute changes in my schedule. The hotel building that I ended up staying in was still under construction. It’s as if the whole country is preparing itself for a new journey.
Romanians on one side, Austrians on the other are having bilateral meetings. Italians had just finished theirs and were packing up. Turks are everywhere, mind you. Iranians, being in the spotlight, did look rather happy and proud, and understandably so, after all these years of isolation. They are coming back from self-imposed exile. Just look at the facts regarding this pragmatic transformation in Iran. It all started with President Rouhani’s election on a moderate ticket in 2013. They set to work on the nuclear deal immediately, and recently packed it up. Sanctions are at least partially removed for now. Then Iran held parliamentary elections, which sounded out support for Rouhani’s engagement policies. I call it a pragmatic transformation. Rouhani strikes me as the kind of person to agree with Deng Xiaoping’s famous statement that “It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.” In the past, all the officials were seeing imperialist plots and conspiracies around them. That seems to have changed now. Pragmatic transformation is about facing facts, not fighting them. Iranians are at a crossroads and they know it.
Turkey and Iran took different routes 35 years ago. Turkey started an economic transformation process and decided to open up. Iran started a political transformation process and clammed up. Iran’s per capita GDP was higher than Turkey’s at the time of the 1979 revolution. That has changed. Turkey is now more prosperous than Iran. Why are Iran and Turkey at a crossroads now? Simple. The urbanization rates of both countries have reached that of Germany, which is around 75 percent. That means an easy growth recipe no longer exists.
Growth now requires reforms, both in Iran and Turkey. I am hopeful about both countries’ futures. The economic transformation of Iran is just about to start. Turkey now has a pragmatic transformation process, a little China, at its eastern doorstep. We should think long and hard about how to best utilize it for the welfare of our region.
This commentary was published in Hürriyet Daily News on 05.03.2016
