The real damage of
last week’s abortive coup in Turkey is only now becoming apparent. Using the
excuse of the coup, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan has moved to implement
political and administrative changes he could not get through the normal political
process. Key to this move is purging thousands of civil servants, educators,
judges, army officers who just might hold an opinion he doesn’t like. Then he declares a state of emergency.
The ‘cleansing’ was so swift and so thorough
that very few people doubt these lists had been prepared long before the coup
attempt. Now the state of emergency will give him unprecedented and unchecked
powers to transform the country any way he likes. It would not be surprising if
a new condition of military or civil service employment is swearing an oath of loyalty to
Tayyip Erdoğan.
While the
political damage is bad enough, the real long-term damage is to the country’s
educational system. Erdoğan simply is not comfortable around very well
educated, well-travelled people – people who tend to ask awkward questions.
Thousands of teachers have been fired, university rectors forced to resign, and
anyone identified as an ‘academic’ –
formerly a title of some pride – has been banned from leaving the country.
Erdoğan considers universities as breeding grounds for opposition to his grand
ideas of a reformed Turkey. The only
problem is that his vision of reform
doesn’t include things like dissent, innovation, creativity, or – God forbid –
smoking and drinking. Oh, and by the way, in Erdoğan’s Turkey, each bride would
produce at least three children.
Could it get this bad in Turkey? |
He gave lip
service to the idea of more universities and then failed to staff them or
staffed them mainly with his henchmen whose idea of a ‘proper’ student was someone who kept his mouth shut and did what he
was told. A vice-rector of one of these new universities was quoted as saying
how much more he preferred the company of illiterate peasants to his educated
colleagues.
Turkey used to
have a university system that proudly stood out in the region. Universities
like the Middle East Technical University, the private Koç and Sabancı
universities, Bosphorus University and others were centres of real scholarship.
Now their very independence, the independence without which real scholarship
and research do not exist, is under threat. Erdoğan cannot stand dissent or
free thinking in any form. And can you think of any self-respecting university
where dissent and free thinking are not critical parts of the entire process?
He has yet to grasp the fact that some pretty good ideas emerge from just such
messy dissent.
Erdoğan doesn’t
care much about cultural creativity because such creativity is by definition
messy and rebellious. One gets the impression that he and his followers much
prefer the traditional sound of the Janissary band to the rebellious and defiant notes of
Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.
But Erdoğan should
care a great deal about economic creativity and innovation – without which the
country will remain buried in the Third Division. His loud chorus of supporters
loves the statistics that Turkey is so much better off now than when the ruling
party took power in 2002. True enough, but
completely irrelevant. When the ruling Justice and Development Party took
over the country was in a deep depression with a ruined financial system. By
comparison, anything would look good. But the main reason for the improvement is that the government’s economic team followed the International Monetary
Fund’s recovery prescription to the letter. By about 2010, Erdoğan got
tired of those constraints and thought he could run things better. Big mistake.
The current trend
is not healthy. Inflation is creeping back up, the currency is depreciating
rapidly, unemployment is up, investment is down, growth has slowed, and the private sector is
heavily indebted in foreign currency. Not a recipe for strong performance.
But more than the
raw numbers, the very structure of the economy should concern any serious
official. The Turkish economy is filled with yesterday’s businesses -- businesses like construction, cement,
bottling, simple metal bashing, or assembly of someone else’s products. None of
these produce much value added. Turkey has a strong food processing industry,
but take a look at the equipment all those companies use. You will have a very
hard time finding any part that is Made
in Turkey.
Where is the
innovation? Where is the investment? Where are the new, ground-breaking
industries – industries that didn’t exist a few years ago and will lead the way
into the future? Part of the answer is that Turkish businessmen tend to prefer
construction – with a fairly definite payoff – to the potential, if unsure,
rewards of investing in innovation.
Beyond investment,
such innovation requires the very messy, creative, free-thinking environment
that Erdoğan hates. Can you imagine that icon of free thinking, Steve Jobs,
flourishing in an environment where dissent and free speech are crushed? Or
just imagine Einstein with his radical theory of how the world really works
flourishing in the oppressive Turkish environment.
Turkey does not
lack for brilliant, talented people. But it is very hard to see them sticking
around in such a stifling cultural, academic and economic environment. It is
much easier to see that brilliance and talent flourishing in other countries.