If the situation is dire!

The subject I will discuss with you today is not the current state of the country, but rather a brief journey into the historical dynamics that have combined to create today's static situation. First, let us agree on the understanding that every country's economic condition is the result of the socio-economic conditions it has passed through. For this reason, unlike historical narratives, an account based on causal analysis must examine which historical milestones the country or economy has traversed. Moving from this logic in our discussion today, I want to examine the milestones we have passed to arrive at the current conditions that make us blush.

I must state immediately that in such analyses, the world economic system applied and the country's position within the global system are fundamental determinants. When the Republic of Turkey was founded, the dominant economic system in the world was capitalism at the stage of closing its first industrial phase, while Turkey was a peripheral economy under the capitulatory dominance of central capitalist countries. To deepen the issue further, the Republic of Turkey opened its eyes to the world as a peripheral economy in a capitalist world drifting toward a second global crisis.

When we focus a bit on the subject, it becomes clear that during the founding of the nation-state at a time when central countries were drifting into crisis, the country's determination to gain economic and political independence was as significant a factor as the pressure from capitalists and the fact that a powerful Communist bloc had taken on the role of protector for our northern neighbor. In this context, I believe it is our historical duty to express our gratitude to our Communist friends as much as to the economic crises into which the capitalist world was drifting.

The creation of a peripheral economy while central economies were drifting into global crisis, and the transformation from a multinational empire to a single-nation defined nation-state, is a subject that needs to be pondered and demonstrated with economic evidence by economic historians as much as by economic theorists. Leaving this matter to economic historians, let us examine the intermediate milestones that have brought the country to where it is today.

I must say at the outset that the dilapidated state of the Ottoman Empire bothered the central capitalist countries more than it bothered the Ottomans. Because the Ottoman Empire constituted a very vast, perhaps the largest and most widespread colonial area ever seen in history for central capitalist economies. However, with the establishment of the Soviets and the period in which they experienced their fastest development, the image of the Empire, consisting of a collapsed shell, posed a serious danger to the capitalist bloc in the context of the spread of communism. In this case, it was an important intervention that had to be made on behalf of capitalism for the capitalists to take control of the situation instead of the Communists, and to establish dominance in the region to prevent the Communists from infiltrating the south. However, there was no obstacle to the entry of communists into the area occupied by capitalists with imperialist ambitions, even at a time when the Baku Conference was being held and some representatives from the Ottomans were attending the conference, while the gravity of the situation for the capitalists remained intense. Let us leave these topics to economic historians and political historians, and take a look at our economic milestones after the founding, and briefly discuss how we were brought to these days within the scope of this article.

First, let us clearly state that the Republican administration, as a founding system, was born into the capitalist system. It should be thought that the orientation toward capitalism rather than socialism, despite our northern neighbor and the Westerners' exploitation of the Ottoman Empire, had historical reasons rather than economic power relations. Namely, economic systems are a whole of production relations that emerge as a result of transformations experienced over time, rather than instantaneous shifts. As the Ottoman Empire transformed into the Republic of Turkey, let alone the issue of being an economic structure that had not even reached the first industrial stage, the country was not even a high-level agricultural country yet. As such, there was no proletariat to support a socialist revolution, nor did it possess the structures for a transition to socialism from the Ottoman period. In fact, in 1923, before the final and definitive signatures were signed in Lausanne, Mustafa Kemal's explicit statements at the Economic Congress gathered in İzmir regarding the abolition of the Tithe (Aşâr) and the need for foreign capital on the condition that they be subject to our laws should be seen as a clear message both to the tribes within and to the central imperialists. Under these conditions, the establishment of the state is, according to some sources, the result of the influence of the central capitalist bloc, especially the British, and according to others, the work of the combative will of the Anatolian people.

Leaving this debate to historians and looking at the actual picture, we encounter an administration under imperialist pressure and control in the first period between 1923 and 1929. It is not heroes, but economic conditions that have the final say in history! But when subjective elements that have decision-making power over objective conditions come into play, they also influence the course of history. It is this fabric that formed the economic foundation that the AKP is trying to erase today, through the decision to erase the economic backwardness that led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and to keep pace with world capitalism, both with the incredible moves in the Statism period of the 1930s and the work done with high determination and will in the period until the Second Partition War.

The contributions of the Statism practices and the infrastructure works and industrialization moves made in the period until 1938 to the development moves undertaken in Turkey are too important to need counting here. In almost all works written about Turkey, it is noted that except for the 1923-1929 period, when British and Western influence and pressure continued, there was no cabotage right, and customs were not controlled, truly many and great breakthroughs were made in the short period until the Second Partition War. However, 1938 and beyond have unfortunately gone down in history as periods when Turkey surrendered to imperialism.

The date of Turkey's surrender to imperialism took place with the 1950 elections and the Menderes administration coming to power. During the Menderes period, which began in 1950, commercial freedom was implemented, and the 1958 moratorium was experienced with a high current account deficit in the period of commercial imperialism. In the 1958 agreement, known as the Paris agreement, heavy debts were spread over time, devaluation was carried out, and Turkey moved to a planned period and protectionist import-substitution practices with the 1961 Constitution. However, in this period, Turkey entered the period of assembly imperialism through assembly agreements. The country, which entered 1979 with a crisis due to the Cyprus operation and the embargo applied to the country, was placed under financial exploitation, in other words, financial imperialism, with financial imperialism and hot money operations in the financial period in the 1980s. Finally, Turkey, which drifted into neoliberal imperialism with the 2000 IMF program, has entered into intense financial exploitation today by switching from a planning understanding to a Medium-Term Program understanding, with chronic current account deficits, chronic debt stock, and chronic savings deficits. As a matter of fact, we have tied our hands to hot money inflows as the only remedy for the bottlenecks we are experiencing today. It should be kept in mind that the financial stage is a much faster and more intense stage of exploitation than exploitation at the production stage. No country, especially Turkey with its 85 million people, can reach anywhere with financial exploitation; on the contrary, it is doomed to go further backward every day.