Hamburg overshadowed by Antalya and Hangzhou!


The G20 summit, which has just kicked off in Hamburg, Germany, this week will be highly controversial in many respects. First of all, let me say that the G20 Antalya summit in 2015 created crucial solutions for developing countries and the world's poor. In other words, the Antalya summit was a summit that represented and covered the G20 in the strictest sense. Then China continued this with the Hangzhou summit in 2016. Turkey and China made the G20 a real platform to bring solutions to the fundamental economic and political problems in the world in two successive summits. This year, however, Germany is hosting the summit - which brings this level down. Germany's G20 summit is highlighting the theme of digitalization. Here, we understand Germany's emphasis on its billions of euros of investments in Industry 4.0. Germany wants to say that the previous great industrial revolution was a process led by the U.K., and now Germany itself is the leader of the current digital revolution. Germany's desire to set the standards of digital industry and to impose them on developing countries at the meetings held before the G20 leaders' summit confirms this determination. However, Germany must know that the digital revolution will not run in the line of a single country, unlike the previous industrial revolution, by the nature of information technologies.

Apart from all this, the fact that this summit is being held in Germany is an important focus of the debate. Germany has long had a problematic view of "developing countries," especially of Turkey, or more precisely "the eastern side," which constitutes the backbone of the G20. We can say that this problematic view actually became evident with the fall of the Berlin Wall in the beginning of the 1990s. With the fall of the wall, Germany first embraced East Germany. In fact, the "engulfment" of East Germany was the first step toward a new fragmentation and colonization process that Germany initiated through Eastern Europe.

Zbigniew Brzezinski calls it "Balkanization." Yes, the Yugoslavian civil war and the disintegration of Yugoslavia were a new German-based colonization project, starting in Eastern Europe, extending through Turkey to the Caspian and Eastern Mediterranean. There were three important stops here: The first is Yugoslavia, which dissolved after a civil war. The second is Turkey, the Eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa - which is still being maintained.

This is precisely the historical economic political aspect behind the "tension" between Turkey and Germany. Germany is very eager to fill the areas the U.S. vacated in the 2008 crisis. Unfortunately, this "eagerness" often brings it back to its dream of the Reich of the 1930s. Also, the political stalemate that has started with the U.K.'s Brexit is "tantalizing" Germany. Germany, of course, cannot undertake this "Balkanization" project, which will cover all Eurasia, on its own. So, it wants to have the U.S. and the U.K. on its side by showing them the case of China and Russia like a big stick. It is attempting to be the speaker of Western developed countries' impositions on important policies such as growth, protectionism, new trade order and refugee issue during major and institutionalized platforms such as the G20 summits and to be the stick-holding regulator of Europe.

I personally observed this in the Hangzhou G20 summit hosted by China in 2016 and the Antalya G20 summit hosted by Turkey in 2015.

Germany opposed every solution for developing countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, for inclusive growth, at the G20 Turkey summit and imposed the outdated, colonial and failed policies of the previous century. Today, the whole political and economic crisis of Southern and Eastern Europe, including Greece's debt crisis, is due to the policies Germany has imposed and implemented since 1989.

The fact that the euro is overvalued these days and that it has almost replaced the Deutsche mark is not only the problem of the eurozone, but is a threat of financial crisis for the whole world. This is because the precious euro has reduced the exports of Eastern European countries, making them the internal market of Germany. It is Germany's current policy to create a chain of countries that cannot survive without external debt and imports and to manage them politically.

Apart from this, Germany also determines the EU's policies on labor and capital flow, especially protectionism, in line with its own interests. For this reason, the EU has not kept any of its promises to Turkey about the refugee problem.

Now, one of the main issues being discussed in Hamburg is the immigration and refugee problem. In fact, countries like Germany are mainly responsible for this problem because of the hot conflict zones and civil wars created and the integration of refugees in humanitarian conditions. From this point of view, Turkey has a firm stance against the problem and, more fundamentally, against impoverishing economic policies.

During this summit, Turkey will seek solutions and bring suggestions to the basic economic problems and economy policies of all developing countries meeting the same fate on the basis of new inclusive growth policies.

Turkey will once again bring up the inclusive growth and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)-oriented economy, which were strongly addressed during the G20 Antalya Summit, and the new trade and energy routes and new trade order, new monetary systems (trade with local currencies), which were addressed during the G20 Hangzhou summit one year later. Apart from that, Turkey will underline at every opportunity that it regards immigration and the refugee problem primarily as a problem of humanity. Turkey will express at this summit and on all platforms that how grave consequences it will have that developed Western countries regard this problem only as an economic and even as a political problem that goes as far as racism. This G20 summit will not be able to bring a solution to this humanitarian tragedy because of the hosting country's view of the refugee problem, but Turkey will concretely tackle both the cause and the solution of this problem.

Crucial problems such as unemployment and young unemployment undoubtedly stem from the economy policies which remained in the last century and are used to transfer resources to only a few developed countries. The new technological revolution is now a process carried out by all mankind, and this process should be the basic approach to highlight a fair world order to overcome the old in summits like the G20.