After another big victory, AKP once again claimed its dominant place in Turkish politics. Despite the liberal concerns over civil liberties and the secularist concerns over Turkish secular lifestyle, half of the voters thought that AKP was their best choice among more than dozen parties in the elections. After impressing these voters with their two term performance since 2002, Erdogan and company will face serious challenges right after this election victory. How they respond to these challenges will shape the athmosphere of Turkish politics.

Overheating economy

The most immediate concern is the overheating Turkish economy. After experiencing a significant boom last year, Turkey is facing the twin trouble of accelerating trade deficit and inflation. Both of these problems stemmed from expansion of domestic credit to fight the recession. Although the Turkish Central Bank increased the reserve requirements for the commercial banks earlier this year, their interest rate policy stayed largely expansionary. With almost 0 real interest rates, banks had no trouble increasing their reserves and lending more. The most troublesome lending was lending to consumers, as they preferred to buy more imported goods. Increasing domestic inflation partly caused by rising energy prices, partly by increased domestic credit, became another sign of overheating. As global economy has its own concerns, Turkey can’t rely on capital flows to finance its current account deficit for too long. Macroeconomic policy should be on top of the agenda for prime minister Erdogan.

Unemployment and Population Growth

There are also longer term economic worries awaiting the new AKP cabinet. Unemployment is too high after the recession added 1million new members to the sad army of unemployed. As more young people enter the labor force in upcoming years, AKP needs to find ways to create more and more jobs to limit the unemployment. 3 children per family recommendation of Erdogan may be AKP’s suicidal policy, as the Turkish population grows and unemloyment problem becomes more severe.

Trade deficit has also longer term aspects, because growth in Turkish economy always foments more imports. Turkey needs export based growth and more domestic energy sources.

Constitutional Reform

Most pre-election discussion was on the constitutional reform in Turkey. Most parties agree on the idea that Turkey needs a new civil constitution that is different from the miltary constitution of 1982. However, had AKP won 367 seats in the parliament, it would have the power to reform the constitution unilaterally. Given the autocratic tendencies of AKP such as trying to soften the separation of powers to strengthen the executive, a unilateral AKP constitution could be Russian Roulette for the already struggling Turkish liberal democracy. Mainly for this reason The Economist supported the social-democrat opposition party, namely Republican People’s Party (CHP). However the election results gave 326 seats to AKP, which is not enough even to amend the constitution through a referendum. Erdogan acknowledged this result as a public call for consensus building before drafting the new constitution. With Nationalist Front’s strict red lines, CHP’s secularist and liberal concerns and Kurdish MP’s call for education in native language, building this consensus will be hard. We hope that the result will be a constitution that protects civil liberties, and maintains the system of separated powers.

Libya and Syria

Erdogan needs to reassess its stance regarding Syria and Libya if he considers Turkey as a regional power. So far, Turkey did hardly nothing more than kindly observing the Arab Spring. However, as the most advanced democracy in the Middle East region, there are many opportunities. Turkey needs to reaffirm its liberal and democratic stance against the despots in the region, that are supported by the oil-rich Arab monarchies.  A solid liberal stance can be Erdogan’s last chance to reject the claims that he is a superficial supporter of democracy in Turkey.

However, birthdays are also sources of a urge to assess your life and see where it is going. Which chapter of life you are about to close and which one you are about to begin? What is the overarching theme, the common point, the distant resolution that makes those chapters parts of one novel? Is there really a necessity to have such elements of unity in life, or is it just to make it simpler to think about?  You don’t really need to convince a publisher to think it is good after you die, eh? Should I be looking back and see what impossible things I have achieved or what really simple things I screwed up? Should I think about the current chapter and decide what I want to do before it ends? Or should I outline all my goals for next chapters and invest in them, thinking that future is not too risky or the returns are not too low?

Best questions are the ones without answers. Ones with answers get boring too soon. I guess life is not too short as most people say. It is so long that we need questions without answers to move it around, make it a dynamic.

Best birthdays are ambivalent ones. If there is an architect of this life, she hated certainty, absolutes and one-sidedness. Here we go again for the 24th time.

“What have you to do with Being, friend,

And empty opinions about the notion of mind and spirit?

Joyfully live and let the world pass happily,

The beginning of that matter was not arranged with you in mind.”

Omar Khayyam, traslated by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs

The book is manly oriented around two themes: Women and Power. Although I would encourage everybody to read the novel, I would definitely encourage my male friends more. Rushdie does a great job of questioning and narrating our carnal desires for more power and beautiful women.

Here is a few passages from the novel:

” “Your time has come” the emperor assented. “So tell us the truth fully before you go, what sort of paradise do you expect to discover when you have passed through the veil?” The Rana raised his mutilated face and looked emperor in the eye. “In paradise, the words worship and argument mean the same thing,” he declared. “The Almighty is not a tyrant. In the House of God all voices are free to speak as they choose, and that is the form of their devotion.” He  was an irritating, holier-than-thou type of youth, that was beyond question, but in spite of his annoyance, Akbar was moved. “We promise you,” the emperor said, “that we will build that house of adoration here on earth.” Then with a cry – Allahu Akbar, God is great, or, just possibly, Akbar is God- he chopped off the pompous little twerp’s cheeky, didactic, and therefore suddenly unnecessary, head.” (page 35)

” “You don’t need those flowers anymore” she [Kara Köz] told him [Argalia the Turk], caressing them. “Now you have me instead to be your good luck charm.”

He thought, Yes, I have you, but only until I don’t. Only until you choose to leave me as you left your sister, to change horses again as you changed from Shah Ismail to me. A horse is a horse, after all.” (page 223)

“Again, at once, he was mired in contradictions. He did not wish to be divine but he believed in the justice of his power, his absolute power, and, given that belief, this strange idea of the goodness of disobedience, that somehow slipped into his head was nothing less than seditious… That discord, difference, disobedience, disagreement, irreverence, iconoclasm, impudence, even insolence might be wellsprings of the good. These thoughts were not fit for a king.” (page 310)

“Tunisia’s convulsion should also be a message to western backers of the Arab world’s autocratic regimes. Diplomats have never had illusions about Mr Ben Ali’s rule – in fact US envoys have been warning of growing social anger. But the US and Europe have too easily fallen into the trap of believing that the only alternative to autocracy is Islamist movements that are, to be sure, less accommodating to western foreign policy interests.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ffb6ef1a-201a-11e0-a6fb-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1B88wBOS6

Macroeconomic implications of the study of Akerlof and Kranton relate to the consideration of social norms and identities in markets. Although classical economic theory consider the macro level behavior as a mere sum of individual decisions, changing norms in the markets may be more helpful in explaining the changes in the aggregate level. It is not sufficient to only consider that incentives, i.e. costs and benefits, for individual actors have changed; it may just be that the norms for consumption, investment or financial risk taking have changed. Using the analytical tools of Akerlof and Kranton helps to understand the reasons and the outcomes of the latest recession, giving us a better opportunity to evaluate policy proposals.

Classical economic theory would claim that individual decisions in the financial markets caused the shock in 2008. Nevertheless, the tools of “identity economics” can be used to show that it was the changing norms in the markets since 2001 that caused the fall of the financial system. With the dotcom bubble crush in 2001 the appetite for the risk in the markets turned from the technology sector to the financial sector. Many financial products that were designed to hedge risks started to be used to take more risk for higher returns. Also the rise of the emerging markets and pleasing domestic economic conditions made the lenders assume that high risk borrowers were good investment. It is hard to explain all of these changes only based on the changing cost-benefit situations for the individual investors. It rather became the norm to take high risks that could be detrimental to the individual actor, as all actors felt to urge for high returns and high risks. In language of Akerlof and Kranton, the identity utility of risk taking increased. The risks that would be described as deviation became the norms. This trend continued until the fall of Lehman Brothers served as a shock to make actors redefine the financial-social norms.

As the norms in financial markets started to be questioned after the fall of Lehman, conservation of capital became the primary concern. It became impossible to find financing for risky investments since risk taking was no longer the norm. As the shock hit the non-financial markets, the consumers also questioned the norms that were high spending and borrowing; the marginal propensity to consume decreased substantially. As the old norms of risk taking and consuming were challenged, lack of certainty created the exact opposite behavior of low risk and high saving.

This different understanding of macroeconomics from the identity economics perspective can give the policy makers new ideas. Instead of giving the individual actors material incentives to alter their behavior, more can be done to alter the norms in the markets. Akerlof and Kranton point out that rather than reward-punishment mechanisms of the system, the inner workings of the groups result in efficient outcomes. Therefore, the financial markets should not be regulated with an iron hand, but the risk taking norms in the markets should be lead to moderation through indirect intervention. For instance increased transparency of the risky structures of the investment banks can change the norms in those institutions and can make them more responsible to their shareholders as well as the public. On another hand, the decreased consumption and investment in the non-financial markets are also related to the norms in those markets. The actors had to question the former norms due to the recession and it may take some time before they build the new norms in their spending and investment behavior through repeated games in this new environment. The government agencies can speed up this process by disseminating more information to the consumers and investors about the new conditions in the markets, so that the social behavior and the new norms can be generated quickly.

“12 Eylül, 12 Mart ve daha önceki 27 Mayıs darbeleri, hiçbir mantığa dayanmayan ve millet adına hiçbir yarar vaatetmeyen bir çeşit sindirme ve herkese haddini bildirme, sonra da iktidarı ele geçirme ve şahsî saltanatları devam ettirme hareketleriydi.”(kaynak)

Hoca oldugu icin teorik olarak istikrarli ve durust bir insan olmasi gereken ayni Fethullah Gülen’in kendi sitesinde Ekim 1980 tarihli Sizinti dergisinde yazdigi yaziyi bulmak mümkün. Darbeden sonra Fethullah Hoca sunlari yazmis:

“Sahnenin bu rengârenk aldatıcılığı, ortalığı inleten valsin korkunç uyutuculuğu ve kostümün gözbağlayıcılığı karşısında, oynanan oyunun gerçek yüz ve vahşetini ilk sezen, son karakolun kahraman bekçileri oldu. Bu sezme, ümit dünyamızda yeniden kendimize gelmemizi ve kendi kendimizi idrak etmemizi te’min etti. Aslında buna bir sezme demek de uygun değildir. Bu, düşmanı kıskıvrak yakalama ve bir zaferdir. İçtimâî bünyenin, haricî bir kısım erâciften temizlenme, arındırılma ve aslına ircâ zaferi. Bu zafer, kendinden ümit edilenleri getirdiği takdirde, Türk’ün zaferler hanesinde en muallâ yeri işgal edecektir. Böyle bir ilk tefahhüs (5) ve sezişe, başka bir yazımızda selam durulmuş ve gaziler ocağının yiğit eri mehmetçiğe teşekkürler sunulmuştu.

Ne var ki, yıllardan beri, binbir saldırı ile rahnedar olmuş bir bünye, böyle hemen bir mualece ile iyi edilemeyeceği de muhakkaktı. Daha köklü ve daha gönülden bir hareket gerekliydi ki, millî bünyeyi kemiren yıllanmış seretanlar (6) bertaraf edilebilsin…

Ve işte şimdi, binbir ümit ve sevinç içinde, asırlık bekleyişin tulûu saydığımız, bu son dirilişi, son karakolun varlık ve bekâsına alâmet sayıyor; ümidimizin tükendiği yerde, Hızır gibi imdadımıza yetişen Mehmetçiğe, istihâlelerin son kertesine varabilmesi dileğimizi arz ediyoruz.”(kaynak)

1980′de darbeyi ve demokrasinin kesintiye ugramasini alkislarla karsilayanlarin simdi kendinlerini magdur olarak göstermeleri herseyden önce çirkin bir harekettir.