Turkey’s long-term goal should be sustainable development

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Turkey’s wealthiest business group, the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSİAD), said on Tuesday that Turkey’s rapid economic growth should also increase people’s living conditions through ensuring sustainable development.

The association made its “Vision 2050 Turkey” report public at a conference in İstanbul where its chairwoman, Ümit Boyner, took to the podium, underlining that Turkey’s achievements in economic growth were not fully reflected by the level of development in the country. “There are many steps Turkey — which ranks 83rd among 169 countries in [the United Nations] Human Development Index — should take with regards to human development components,” she said.

Previously, Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, who chairs the government’s Economy Coordination Board (EKK), said that the Turkish economic growth model will also benefit the people of the country. “It is not possible for Turkey to continue competition with a policy that is based on cheap labor while it aims to have a gross domestic product [GDP] per capita of $25,000 [by its centennial in 2023],” he said on Sept. 16.

Economic growth at the expense of one’s population is a common issue for most rapidly developing economies such as those in the Far East and Southeast Asia, where industry workers make $1-2 per day while working lengthy hours, heaving to deal with the heavy workload necessary for their factories to keep up with high demand in their export markets in the developed West. The Turkish economy has grown at just over 5 percent per year on average between 2002 and 2010. Its re-energized economy contracted only in 2009, by 4.7 percent, because of global financial turmoil that erupted following a credit crunch in the US in the summer of 2008. Accelerating its widely lauded growth, Turkey’s GDP expanded by another 10.2 percent in the first half of this year, making the country the fastest-growing economy in the January-July period.
‘Not too late for Turkey’

For Boyner, sustainable development requires a complete approach from policy makers and businesspeople to establish a good balance between the people’s needs and the available natural resources. “Ensuring sustainable development is one of the most critical tasks the 21st century’s business world faces. We will have to live together with 9 billion people on earth within the boundaries of the resources the world has to offer,” she said.

Underling that Turkey is now a country that has a say in global affairs, Boyner also noted that the rapidly growing economy enables the flexibility of being able to take the necessary steps to make its development sustainable. “In other words, it is not too late for Turkey to enjoy a sustainable and balanced development in both the social and economic fields by the year 2050 should it develop the necessary policies with the participation of all stakeholders,” TÜSİAD chairwoman said.

The report emphasizes that Turkey will have a demographic window of opportunity as the size of the working population increases while the rate of population growth is slowing down. But this must be taken advantage of properly because otherwise it may equally be a threat for the country. It says measures should be taken to dissuade working in the informal part of the economy, and to create more jobs for the country’s population, the youngest in Europe. “A lot of east Asian countries benefited from such an opportunity and accelerated their economic growth,” it said.