We are the children of the Ottoman Empire: our well-established past,deep history and riches have become disadvantages rather than advantage for us. Therefore, entrepreneurial heritage is not left.
In the latest period of the Ottoman Empire; more of an, entrepreneurship and craft were in the hands of minority. Wearing painted shoes, ironed trousers, white collar starched shirt, to have in nice chats, taking a role in state administration, work less, having fun time, and pace with using an umbrella as a walking stick were making us happy.
After established the republic, Veteran Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has made profound changes in Turkish history (the surname law, hat law, establishing Turkish Language Association and Turkish Historical Society etc.) Worked hard on infrastructure work; has made great social and economic decisions in our poor and tired country and these decision have been implemented in a short time. He has launched a huge production mobilization throughout the country.
The state has undertaken a large part of entrepreneurship in accordance with that day’s conditions.
The state has provided work opportunity to unemployed people and produced basic needs for poor people of his country. As the time progressed, apart from the basic necessities, the state has began to produce in many sectors towards the big industrial areas starting from the small industry. We see that the state has necessarily undertaken entrepreneurship. While doing these things, It is proven by the importance given to agriculture and livestock that our farmers are the masters of the nation.
After our republic is established, our country has made great moves in political, social and economic fields and these moves have continued for a while with a fast pace. It was the best of all which had to be done on that day’s conditions. Due to these circumstances, the spirit of entrepreneurship was not at the desired scale, because conditions were not favorable.
The entrepreneurship of minorities was in front of the range to be as much as underestimated next to state entrepreneurship.
After World War 2, the minorities have been moved to Israel, Greece, Armenia, developed countries of Europe, United States and Canada. Even we were not willing, we had to do entrepreneurship and craft by ourself after these migrations. That means, these tasks have been undertaken by us, unwillingly.
WE SEE THAT, DUE TO THESE AND SIMILAR REASON AS TURKISH NATION WE ARE LATE IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Our entrepreneurial spirit was affected negatively, by crooked urbanization, distorted industrialization and distorted education brought by them, in our country. Our country has had also difficulties to adopted to the rapidly developed countries in political, social and economic terms.
It is mentioned that our country’s economy is governed by a liberal economy. Whereas, the rules of the liberal economy (free market economy) are not fully operational! The conditions that the state is in lead the economy accordingly to this direction and these bring advantage to the state in the short term but disadvantage over the long term. Inflation, interest rate and exchange rate policy, these three instruments need to increase or decrease in the same proportion. However, we see that there are no ups and downs on equal proportion, which creates high inflation.
Some factors that negatively affect our entrepreneurship;
We can not plant a seed for a new entrepreneur neither educated nor uneducated (ranker). For instance; in our country, the chance of a potential entrepreneur succeeding, when a person graduated from any ‘X’ faculty and starts an entrepreneurial activity with a medium-size capital in any sector after an average age of 25-30, is 20%, however, while he/she is studying from one side If he/she also actively works in the same sector that he/she chose then the chance of success is 90%. Unluckily, because of the distorted education in our country, the work he/she does and the subject he/she studies are different. Nevertheless, the chances of success are still high, because, he learned life and work by living. Hence he/ she gained experience at high level.
- As a result of terrorism pressure on the people in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia, the residents emigrated to the big cities and this almost brings to the point of destruction of agriculture and livestock. Naturally, decrease of existing entrepreneurs and can not breed new generation of entrepreneurs. The military expenses for terrorism and our spiritual lost which came out as a result of terrorism are two of the major reasons.
- Early movement to Liberal Economy, abolition of customs walls.
- Employment is not directly proportional to the population, import meets a need of demand so we can not train entrepreneurs.
İstanbul 2018
VEYSİ BALİN