Not word upon word, but stone upon stone

Since 2002, when the AK Party came to power, Turkey has grown its economy 3.5-fold and raised its exports 4.3-fold, from 37 billion dollars to 160 billion dollars, recording a development rarely matched in the world. In this way it has risen from 27th to 17th place in size among the countries of the world. That from the very beginning it has repeatedly misled the world's economic and financial rating agencies and thrown all their measures off is a success story in itself.

Its zeroing out of its debt to the IMF at the appointed time, in May 2013, by setting aside the IMF's guidance, went on record as a story unprecedented regarding the IMF. According to the economic guidance the IMF stipulates for the countries it lends to, investments were to be cut, social policies abandoned, and employment reduced. It is quite clear that this would have a contracting effect, let alone developing a country's economy. Turkey did not abandon social policies; indeed it developed an unprecedented model of social policy, and it did not cut investments at all, yet its economy continued to revive, to grow and to pay off its debt in full.

Turkey overturned at the end of the year the 2017 growth forecasts that the IMF projected at 2.9 percent, the World Bank at 3 percent, the OECD at 3.4 percent, and the rating agencies at 2.6 percent. By exceeding these forecasts by more than double with 7.4 percent, it left all the G-20 countries behind.

In fact, since May 2013, when Turkey raised its per capita income to 11 thousand dollars and zeroed out its debt to the IMF, the Turkish economy has been subjected to countless international attacks. The Gezi events that began at that date, then December 17-25, the Kobani incidents and finally the July 15 coup attempt were all aimed as much at bringing down the Turkish economy as at overthrowing the government. In parallel with these coup attempts, Turkey was subjected economically to a thousand and one kinds of invisible attack.

Despite this, the Turkish economy recovered quickly, without losing anything of its vitality, and has come to this point. The scene that best expresses the situation was people applying to banks for investment loans on the very next business day after the July 15 coup attempt, and the banks showing no difference in behavior in granting these loans compared with two days before.

Despite this vitality, in order to reach the 2023 targets foreseen by the government years ago, very bold steps need to be taken in the current state of the economy, because per capita income, which has reached 11 thousand dollars, has been stagnant at the same level since May 2103. Although the felt level of prosperity is certainly rising in a visible way, some developments need to be noted in numerical terms as well. Turkey's current account deficit is over 40 billion dollars. Although more than the current account deficit is accounted for by Turkey's energy bill, the dynamism of the Turkish economy has the power to close this deficit. Many raw materials, instead of being processed in Turkey, are exported abroad at cheap prices and the processed versions are imported. This is, for instance, one of the main factors forming the deficit. It is not that there are no investors in Turkey who would undertake these investments and make these touches. They really need to be well encouraged and incentivized.

The ceremony held on Monday at the Presidential Complex, organized by the Ministry of Economy, to deliver incentive certificates for 23 strategic investments to 19 firms is a giant step that will open Turkey's way in this regard and close 19 billion of the current account deficit. With this package prepared in a short time of 6 months, Turkey will have entered a process that will either end or significantly reduce its dependence on foreign sources in many areas.

As an example, Turkey is in fact among the richest countries in the world in copper reserves. But Turkey has to import 400 thousand tons of its annual copper need of 450 thousand tons from abroad. The lightly enriched copper raw material produced from the operating mines, together with the other by-products it contains, is exported abroad as soil at 400 dollars a ton. Moreover it is also written in the books as an export item. But it is possible to process this soil in Turkey and be spared buying it back from abroad at these days' levels of 7000 dollars a ton, and even to export it in the long term.

Siirt is among the foremost of our copper-rich provinces, but its mines are not sufficiently utilized. One of the projects that received an incentive certificate is the Siirt Copper Smelting and Electrolysis Plant. In the first stage it will meet half of Turkey's copper need, and in later stages perhaps all of it… Finding foreign investors for such projects is not hard at all. Indeed, almost all of the incentivized projects have foreign partners, bring their own financing with them, and thus do not put Turkey under an extra new economic burden; they are projects that do not require credit-financing and thus will not generate dollar pressure.

The Ministry of Economy has truly worked like a private investment agency, and with extremely meticulous work has taken 23 such projects into the incentive scope. They are projects each of which will contribute to Turkey's current account deficit, create employment and make a serious contribution to Turkey's high technology level.

Special units have been formed in the Ministry of Economy for the follow-up of each of the projects given incentive certificates, for removing obstacles in front of their stalled work, and a follow-up system has been set up all the way until the investments are realized.

It is necessary to congratulate the Minister of Economy, the esteemed Nihat Zeybekçi. Exactly as our President and the Prime Minister have expressed, he has set about a work that shows what it means to put stone upon stone rather than word upon word. Best wishes.