Meanwhile, as Iraq is disintegrating…

“I have rarely been to a country where everyone is so consummated by politics; that’s wonderful. Turks love to talk politics, but as an economist, I focus on the structural side of the economy and we accept the environment as it is.”

This is the answer I received from Word Bank Turkey director Martin Raiser.

During the interview, which was published yesterday, June 30, he underlined the new economic agenda on which Turkey needed to focus. Yet, Turkey’s agenda is completely dominated by politics and the question I asked was whether he thought political instability to be at the gist of Turkey’s problems.

His was a diplomatic answer. His observation is still important because it tells us something we tend to forget. Yes, we Turks are so consummated by politics that we actually end up avoiding talking about real issues.

As I am writing these lines, Selahattin Demirtaş is making his speech as the Peace and Democracy Party’s (BDP) presidential candidate. We are heading toward presidential elections; it is therefore normal for the agenda to be fully dominated by this issue.

Yet as I write these lines, Iraq is busy being disintegrated and it is no less important than who is going to be Turkey’s next president for the country’s future.

Just a few months ago, a high level official from the Turkish Foreign Ministry had told a small group of journalists about the chaos that was approaching Iraq. The message I got was that unless Nouri al-Maliki is not elected or changed strategies, which, even then both appeared to be impossible, Iraq’s disintegration looked nearly inevitable. I was highly interested by the top level diplomat’s statement since all I had heard from...