Lessons from Turkey

"Istanbul a couple of decades ago was more like an African city than a European city", said one of the Pakistanis living in Turkey for 30 years. Hard to imagine as you come out of the largest airport hub in the world where Turkish airlines has overtaken Emirates in connecting everybody with everybody around the world. It is easy to presume that Istanbul is the capital but it is not. Ankara is. Turkey is moving out of its one city stopover image and developing cities such as Antalya and Konya to make people visit Turkey for its beauty, history and culture.

In the Muslim world, rarely has a country transformed economically and politically in such a short time to pose competition to the European countries. There are a lot of debates on Erdogan's style of governance as there were on the authoritarian styles of Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohammad who ruled their countries for decades. The fact of the matter is that what they achieved is no mean accomplishment. What we as a country need is to look at is the positive side and emulate those areas where we are facing challenges that Turkey faced decades ago. The two areas where Pakistan needs to focus is economic and human development. Let us look at what Turkey did and what Pakistan can do to accelerate development in the country.

Pakistan's present government is facing the dilemma of the debt trap that has been accumulated to $100 billion by successive governments. Turkey had similar issues but on a smaller scale as the population and size of the countries differ. Since 1961, Turkey had taken 19 IMF loans, Pakistan has taken about 18. Erdogan inherited an IMF debt of $23.5 billion in 2003, which was reduced to $0.9 billion in 2012. During Erdogan's leadership, inflation fell from 32% to 9.0% in 2006. Since then, Turkish inflation has continued to fluctuate around 9% and is still one of the highest inflation rates in region. The Turkish public debt as a percentage of annual GDP declined from 74% in 2002 to 39% in 2009. Thus the lessons to learn is that economy and debt are manageable and will take from three to nine years if persistent reforms are made.

Human development became a priority for Turkey from the first day. Erdogan increased the budget of the Ministry of Education in 9 years from 7.5 billion lira in 2002 to 34 billion lira in 2011, the highest share of the national budget given to one ministry which became higher than military allocations. Compulsory education was increased from eight years to twelve. In 2003, the Turkish government, together with UNICEF, started a campaign called "Come on girls, let's go to school." The goal of this campaign was to close the gender-gap in primary school enrollment through the provision of a quality basic education for all girls, especially in southeast Turkey. For Pakistan, the challenge is not just budget and gender gap but quality gap. Public and madressah schools have produced mushrooms of unfit, left behind school kids and graduates who struggle to get jobs or compete with the private school education elites. The government needs to focus for the next five years on levelling the standard of education in the public and private education.

After assuming power in 2003, Erdogan's government initiated a comprehensive reform programme of the Turkish healthcare system, called the Health Transformation Programme (HTP), to enhance the quality of healthcare and protect all citizens from financial risks. As part of the reforms, the "Green Card" programme, which provides health benefits to the poor, was expanded in 2004. The reform programme aimed at increasing the ratio of private to state-run healthcare, which, along with long queues in state-run hospitals, resulted in the rise of private medical care in Turkey, forcing state-run hospitals to compete by raising quality. Pakistan has introduced Sehat Insaf Card to the poor primarily. This card when first introduced in KP during the 2013-2018 term was very successful in providing quality healthcare to the people below poverty line and then to the rest of the population. However, this facility alone will not improve public hospital conditions. Tough reforms like the MTI act (medical teaching institution) needs to be passed to create accountability of health care professionals in public hospitals.

If Pakistan needs to learn from the Turkish model it must focus on the feasible:

1: Generate more revenues to invest in social and economic development- The economy is already reeling under inflation and more taxes on common man will not solve the problem. Similarly, more debt will just create more dependence. What Turkey did was to sell off its state enterprises to create fiscal space. Pakistan has a list of companies it needs to privatise. This process needs to be expedited to firstly stop putting scarce budget money into bleeding organizations and secondly by selling them to generate the much needed revenue.

2: Boosting SMEs - Turkey made sure that a lot of incentives were given to the small and medium enterprises to boost business and job creation. 80% of businesses in Pakistan are SMEs. Kamyab Jawaan Programs should ensure not just doling out loans but enterprise capacity building to enable the small and medium businesses to sustain and grow.

3: Increase traveller traffic - Like Dubai, Turkey has created reasons for people to visit Turkey. By developing Turkish Airlines as the largest network Turkey has competed with Dubai for traveler traffic. PIA may not be anywhere near such extensive growth but the principle of getting more people to visit stands true. Tourism in Pakistan is already picking up. More ease of travelling facilities by removing unnecessary paperwork and security checks will make the country more accessible.

Not all that has happened in Turkey is worthy of emulation and there are lessons in that as well. What is worth noticing is that in a period between 2002 and 2011 - 9 years - Turkey turned around from being a struggling country to a case study of development in the Muslim world. The other lesson is that any growth that is debt based will be short term as has been witnessed in the last ten years in Pakistan. Growth based on pruning of bleeding enterprises and promotion of small and medium enterprises is where the secret of sustainable development lies.

(The writer can be reached at [email protected])