In the 1970’s, a Turkish film director made Seytan, a campy, micro-budget movie about
a little girl possessed by the devil. Do you think it was based on the Exorcist? Well you’re wrong, it was an
outright ripoff of The Exorcist!
Ismael Metin Erksan, creator of Suzuz Yaz
(Dry Summer) made this cardboard piece of junk, using a copy of the script,
smuggled from the USA. Turkey’s government had this insane program to bar
American movies from the country, then make their own plagiarized version in
Turkey, so that 100% of the revenue would stay domestic. There was a Turkish Exorcist, a Turkish Superman, and I’m told there was a Turkish Jaws. How they filmed the shark scene, I don’t know, and the
Superman ripoff features four different stuntmen holding on to a (slowly)
speeding car. The bad guys run so slowly that Superman has time to grab them
and throw them through the cardboard wall of their hangout.
This is essentially what Turkey’s economy was until the 80’s;
low-quality domestic products, protected by tariffs. Years earlier, Ataturk
started a policy of government intervention in the economy, mainly to increase
industry and agriculture. The problem was, it made the economy dependent on the
government. I guess Turkey was a lot like Britain and Argentina, with lots of
state-owned enterprises, rather than a free market. At the same time, it wasn’t
easy to get loans to start businesses, nor were there a lot of people willing
to buy bonds or buy shares. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that a lot of modern
economies would take off running.
In the second chapter, the authors credit the removal of
protectionism with bringing the economic transformation. I shouldn’t say they
blame the old tariffs for the problem, because a lot of small countries like
Britain and Italy had tariffs. It was their only way to keep their farms in
business and prevent the country from becoming dependent on cheap produce from
the USA. However, there’s a point when a country needs to make the farmers
compete, so I guess 50 years should’ve been long enough. The chapter also
brings Islam into the argument, particularly the religious political parties.
How they changed the economy isn’t clear, but I suspect that by having a
multiparty state, the “old guard” loses power and becomes more receptive to new
thinking.
One thing that isn’t discussed much in this book is the
diaspora funding. How much of Turkey’s money comes from Turks living abroad, I
have to wonder? There are sizeable Turkish communities in Germany and
Australia; do they send money home? Prior to the 1980’s, did money sent home by
Turks living abroad contribute to the economy? Bugra and Osman make it clear that
foreign investment, heavy tourism, and bond sales would come around much later,
so once again we see that funding was scarce in pre-1980’s Turkey. Also, there
was a high level of socialism to the economy, similar to the John Maynard
Keynes model. The country wasn’t exactly mineral-rich, so there wasn’t much to
export, and they didn’t get into light manufacturing the way Japan did. Would
that have strengthened their economy earlier?
I guess the main point of the book is that a government can’t
prop up the economy forever, and at some point you need to get rid of the
tariffs and make the business “leave the nest.” Britain did it in the 80’s, and
so did Israel, South Korea, and many other small nations. From reading this
book, I think Turkey made a great decision not to go on the Euro. It would’ve
left the economy worse than that of Greece. Now that the Eurozone is a
shambles, maybe Turkey’s currency will rise in value? I wonder.
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