A road from Kazakhstan to Kızılcahamam…

Last week I was in Almaty for a symposium on Turkey–Kazakhstan relations. Organized over two days by the Institute of Strategic Thinking, the Atatürk Research Center of the Prime Ministry's Turkish Language, History and Culture Higher Institution, and the Central Asia Research Institute of Khoja Ahmet Yesevi University, the symposium set out both the historical dimension and the future vision of relations between Turkey and Kazakhstan, which gained its independence in 1991.

The presentations were given by nearly 50 experts from Turkey and Kazakhstan.

Each of the Central Asian republics that gained independence in 1991 has its own story and its own identity. The 70-year Soviet experience that all of them lived through, their Muslim identities, and Russia's development today each shape the formation of every one of them separately, and they determine the lines along which each adapts to the new age.

Kazakhstan, for example, has continued to develop since winning its independence in 1991, despite a series of upheavals in the others, under the unchanging leadership of Nursultan Nazarbayev. The elections here are not like the elections customary in the Middle East, where the incumbent dictator emerges with an overwhelming majority. In elections held with incomparably greater transparency, Nazarbayev has indeed received very high votes and has been elected every time so far. This political supremacy has also given him the opportunity to realize very large projects in Kazakhstan. The city of Astana, for example, where all the avenues and streets are laid out as if drawn with a ruler, recalls in its founding and construction the city of Petersburg that Peter founded in Russia. In fact, both the stories behind the founding of the two cities and the events themselves are very similar.

Ibn Khaldun speaks of the tendency of states that feel themselves great to build magnificent cities as a sign of their greatness. For that reason, cities in a sense reflect, just as they are, the claims to civilization about life held by the states that build them. The Soviet experience of urbanism was reflected in the Turkic Republics in its own particular way, in a manner in which the traces of the whole Soviet philosophy can be followed. In Kazakhstan, the city that reflects this understanding of urbanism is Almaty, for example. The cities in the rest of the country, by contrast, have generally not benefited much from this development.

With its oil, natural gas and other underground and surface resources, Kazakhstan is the richest of all the Turkic Republics and, in terms of its political situation, the most stable. Thanks to this, its economic development also continues steadily in terms of per capita income. However, it may also be considered that an income largely dependent on oil may in fact constitute an important obstacle to the more efficient use of the country's resources.

Contrary to the claims that Turkey in the AK Parti era has turned only toward the Middle East in its foreign policy and neglected Central Asia, relations with all the Turkic Republics are in fact living their golden age precisely in this period. To take the simplest example, Turkish Airlines runs daily flights to more than one center in most of the Central Asian republics, and in many of them these flights are multiple and reciprocal. Both on the way to Almaty and on the way back, there was not a single extra empty seat on the plane, and we were told that flights generally operate at this occupancy rate.

Khoja Ahmet Yesevi University was founded before the AK Parti, but in this period, sparing no expense, an effort has been made to make it as effective and efficient as possible. The time has passed for thinking that the Turkic republics exist far away and that, though we are distant from them, the bond of the heart will remain close. Out of sight is out of heart, and in the last ten years Turkey has brought these regions, which are quite distant in terms of mileage, before our eyes one by one and has developed relations at every level, so that it has not left closeness as mere empty rhetoric.

The symposium in question focused on a search, through both its civil and official dimensions, for how the cultural, economic and political relations between the two countries could be developed further. We will continue to relay our impressions of both the symposium and Kazakhstan in the coming days with Öner Buçukçu, with whom we earlier relayed our impressions of Mauritania and Tunisia together.

KIZILCAHAMAM 21ST CONSULTATION MEETING

Having attended, with the dust of the road still on my feet on return from Kazakhstan, the AK Parti's Kızılcahamam 21st Consultation and Evaluation Meeting, I must force my way in and say a word or two about it. The meeting carried a special meaning because it coincided precisely with the 12th anniversary of 3 November, the day the AK Parti came to power.

Having personally attended the meeting for the third time, I am also pleased and excited to see that it gives a true picture of how consultation has become an institutionalized political style within the AK Parti. On the last day, Prime Minister Erdoğan, together with all the cabinet members, carefully noted all the questions coming from party members for five hours and answered every one of them one by one, evaluating the suggestions or ideas received. I thought this was a scene that those who look at the AK Parti from the outside and pontificate absolutely must see.

Indeed, the Kızılcahamam meetings are not the only example of the institutionalization of consultation; the MKYK that meets once a month, the enlarged provincial chairs' meetings, and the MYK, Council of Ministers and Parliamentary Group meetings are all bodies where similar scenes take place. We also know that behind all these bodies there are rich kitchens, each working like a think tank and producing ideas.

Both of the Prime Minister's public speeches were full of emphases reminding party members, who are preparing for the local elections, of their historical and global mission that transcends the local. In fact, to be successful at the local level, one needs to think more globally, and to find more fundamental, soothing and lasting solutions to today's problems, one needs to think with historical depth. In its 13th year since founding and 12th year in power, the AK Parti repeats its claim to be the only party able to carry this historical and global vision.

To be a traveler on the road that stretches from the symposium in Kazakhstan, a typical scene in the context of Turkey's new foreign policy, to Kızılcahamam, where sensitivities regarding the humanitarian problems being experienced in Egypt and Syria were voiced, is a completely different feeling...