Turkey celebrated the 95th anniversary of the republic with great enthusiasm last week. It is important to note that, with the new presidential system, Turkey has switched to a new period and a new stage in its republican-period economy. The "Republican Economy 1.0" was a period from 1923 to 1929 when we raised the Turkish economy with a neoclassical economic understanding by observing the market economy rules. The first moves of this period were made by the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The "Republican Economy 2.0" followed between 1929 and 1938 with Atatürk's soft policies and from 1938 to 1950 with then-President İsmet İnönü's harder policies, which were completely based on statism.
The period from 1950 to 1980, which started with the republic's third president, Celal Bayar, and then-Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, witnessed a blend of private sector-oriented market understanding and state planning by rightist governments under former Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel. During Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit's rule, leftist governments enhanced the public sector's weight from time to time. As a result, the "Republican Economy 3.0" passed through a mixed economic model. Here, I would like to note Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan's move towards heavy industry and founder of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Alparslan Türkeş's call to nationalize the economy. From 1980 to 2002, we switched to a market economy model and liberalization, namely "Republican Economy 4.0," starting with Turgut Özal, and continuing with then-Prime Minister Tansu Çiller, Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan and the Bülent Ecevit-Devlet Bahçeli-Mesut Yılmaz tripartite coalition government. However, due to the statism that pervaded Ankara, the period from 1980 to 2002 was rather painful.
2003 to 2018 has been under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has put in extensive effort to build and implement a structure where all the rules of a true market economy prevail. Now, with the presidential government system under Erdoğan's leadership, we have switched to "Republican Economy 5.0," where Ankara has completely abandoned statism and highlighted performance criteria. In this period, which is based on an information economy and digital development, the private sector will further strengthen its codes of globalization. Our objective is to raise our share the in the global gross domestic product (GDP) and global trade to 1.5 percent from 2023 to 2030, with a high added-value economy based on domestic-national technology. We will continue to carry out exemplary projects on a global scale in strategic sectors and achieve our goals in a determined manner.
Positive growth and civilized diplomacy
In terms of the global economic-political system, it is obvious that the U.S. and its partner countries in the Middle East and Gulf region prioritize their interests by endeavoring into transforming the current period into a state of chaos. As a power player, Turkey's effective plan based on the code of civilized diplomacy and order aims to eliminate the chaotic operation being conducted by the U.S. and its interest circles in our region. This understanding, lacking moral values to the extent that facilitates cooperation with terrorist organizations, has gone as far as recklessness, as demonstrated in the case of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Turkey's decisive superiority has pushed international circles and institutions to question many inhumane issues.
Erdoğan's argument that "the world is bigger than five" has turned into a movement that is being embraced by hundreds of other countries and that has come to make them question all the injustice and inequalities in the United Nations and other global platforms. Likewise, the upcoming period will require Turkey to create an ordered superiority in the face of escalating global recklessness and make a global call in this regard. Turkey's struggle to promote civilized discourse in its own region encourages the continuation of positive growth and the sustainability of economic performance, the driving force of this struggle.
