Time for Mentality Revolution

Thousands of Turks imagine they’ll be able to immediately travel to European countries whenever they wish. This shows the huge gap between expectations and reality. Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan spoke to me a few days ago and complained about the bureaucratic mentality. Unakitan said destroying this mentality and ingraining ideas focusing on individuals would be our achievement at the end of our EU membership process. It won’t be easy for us, because separating our nation’s character from the structure and mentality of our state is impossible. These days should be seen as an opportunity to usher in a Turkish renaissance. Turkey’s EU membership process is the common wish of the US and the EU because the completion of our country’s democratic openings is now an obligation for the global system. The vital interests of the US and the EU depend on Turkey’s integration with the West. However, we can’t predict what might happen to us during this process.

Presidential elections, early general election scenarios and the political reins over the next decade will be influenced by this period. We could get a date for membership negotiations in December; the nation’s expectations would soar; the unemployed would hope for jobs, and these expectations would last for about a year. However, then our citizens could see that nothing has changed and they wouldn’t be pleased. Then the Justice and Development Party (AKP) would begin talking about early elections in order to reverse this. The AKP could think that if elections are held next April, it would have more leverage with the EU. So steps for the party’s domestic balances would be taken, with certain unwanted figures given their walking papers. This would be to ensure another single-party majority, with an eye towards the presidential elections. What about this scenario?”