Infrastructure is often the least-appreciated part of what makes a country strong, and what makes innovation take flight. From my spot in line at the post office, I see a country that does both well; not a country that emphasizes one at the expense of the other. (1)
Casual readers of Zeynep Tüfekçi’s recent NYT column probably thought nothing of that op-ed’s last paragraph, cited above. In fact, because the column’s title indicates no connection to Turkey, I would not have read the column at all if I hadn’t noticed that it stayed on the NYT Opinion section headlines for an inordinately long time. U.S. readers would probably be more amused by the author’s blanket praise for a public service, the U.S. Post Office, which has long been a source of frustration and criticism, even fear. In the 1990s, “going postal” was the term Americans used to refer to those carrying out mass shootings.
The U.S. Postal Service aside, what the more interested reader may notice is that Tüfekçi is actually making a comparison throughout the piece. This is why the column’s initial lines mention Turkey, and the author’s land-of-birth quietly remains the entire commentary’s subtext. Those of us who follow these debates know that two words, which Tüfekçi expects the reader to infer, are missing from the end of that last sentence: not a country that, “like Turkey,” emphasizes one at the expense of the other.
Similarly, Tüfekçi’s entire column can be easily summarized as follows: USA = GOOD; TURKEY = BAD. Certainly the author is entitled to her opinion on such matters. However, as someone who has taken the opposite journey for Tüfekçi, I would like to point out a few details for the sake of conversation and comparison. In the case of the U.S., the situation simply is not as rosy as Tüfekçi suggests. A major debate of U.S. politics over the past decade has been the dismal state of U.S. infrastructure. I remember the point at which this issue really entered the popular U.S. political discourse — over the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The main cause for New Orleans ending up under water was the failure of the levee system protecting the city. Eventually, it turned out that those levees had been cheaply constructed and poorly maintained. Since then many other infrastructure-related topics have received attention in the U.S. Bridges have collapsed, and roads are under constant repair across the nation. Public transportation in most U.S. cities is the subject of ridicule. In most areas of the U.S., interurban transport means either a personal automobile or a plane ride. U.S. internet infrastructure is lacking, defective, slow, and expensive. A major reason for this situation has been the Republican Party’s extreme opposition to government spending or involvement in infrastructure construction or regulation. Overall, the U.S. economy is highly innovative, but infrastructure is not the only contributing factor.
Infrastructure is the easy side of the issue to discuss, though, since Tüfekçi’s readers would be more familiar with those problems. What requires more nuance — nuance that Tüfekçi purposefully neglects — is the Turkish side of the topic. The situation in Turkey is neither as simple nor as grim as Tüfekçi suggests, and for several reasons.
The main problem with Tüfekçi’s discussion is that she is comparing apples and oranges (or, as Turkish people say, “apples and pears”). The U.S. economy, along with Japan, Britain, and Germany, is one of the most advanced industrialized economies on earth. Turkey, on the other hand, is an industrializing economy trying to make the leap from heavy industry, textiles, and consumables, to electronics and high value-added manufactures. In a world of intense competition and financial instability, Turkey is trying to avoid the “middle-income trap.”
As an industrializing economy, Turkey needs more infrastructure of all types in order to support the expanding economy. The third bridge across the Bosphorus, the bridge across the Sea of Marmara’s eastern end, the massive new Istanbul airport, the new sea transport canal project envisioned for Turkish Thrace, and the expansion of conventional and high-speed rail transport across the country, are only some examples of projects either planned or already under way (and interestingly, the anti-AKP opposition is also opposed to all of them). Such infrastructure expansion is a necessary aspect of an industrializing economy because of the centrality of infrastructure to supporting, through various dimensions of transportation, communication, and logistics, all other sectors that contribute to an economy’s growth. And all of this is the subject of intense public discussion — even whether Turkey should have simply skipped 4G or 4.5G and gone directly to 5G is the subject of press polemics. So Turkey’s need for infrastructure is not under question; what is under question is the types and amount of infrastructure needed, and what sorts of sacrifices will be made in order to realize that infrastructure. Those decisions are the stuff of politics.
That leads to the second issue present in Tüfekçi’s discussion: her column is actually a political statement. This statement is disguised as a pleasant diversion about the U.S. post office, decorated with the author’s sure-to-please recollections of personal experiences as a newcomer. Those reminiscences function as a segue to comments on U.S. ability to innovate, and the implied obverse, that Turkey does not. Tüfekçi chooses to sidestep the fact that infrastructure development projects and innovation have both been such central public issues for many years.
[to be continued]
NOTES
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/opinion/why-the-post-office-makes-america-great.html?_r=0
CORRECTION
In Part 1 of this series of columns (“Context and interpretation in press coverage of Turkey (1),” 12 January 2016) I made an error of omission in attributing the recent changes in English-language press reporting on Turkey just to the efflorescence of web sites like Serbestiyet or the Kebab and Camel. The true credit should go to Turkish voters. After four straight elections in which the Turkish voters have openly contradicted the foreign press narrative on Turkish politics, some sectors have begun to comprehend the political reality and accept their wrongheadedness. We’re still waiting for the others to catch up.