SALİM KADIBEŞEGİL

I don’t know how countries were measuring their development levels in 1500s. When asked, I didn’t have a satisfactory reply yet. There are some indicators on size and power in the war battles, but these are not indicators of welfare levels.

In 20th century, dollar was measured as the indicators of development, welfare and so called life quality.

Gross National Product…

Divided by population…

Dollar per person has become the official document of welfare indicator of countries among development league!

G8s, G20s were measured up against this ruler. Turkey is the 16th largest economy of the world. Now it is more important to be the 16th largest economy in the world then once open a time being one of the seven countries who were self-sufficient with agriculture production.

Until September 2008, Iceland was the most developed country in Europe with 47 thousand dollars per person. They bankrupt! They are searching for loaners but there are none.
Greece, Spain, Hungry, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania… Countries that are part of European Union, which is our dream since 1963, are all bankrupt. Or right on the edge of bankruptcy. Prosper community of Europe invented one trillion to save itself. Even world’s super power America’s newly printed 20 trillion dollars wasn’t enough to save over 2 million qualified, college graduates from unemployment.

So…
It is ok to make mistakes as long as you could ignore all things put in and start from scratch! (Yanlış hesap Bağdat’tan döndü!)
Everybody asks each other: “Where did we go wrong?”
It’s actually very simple… Having an indicator on money (dollar) which was projecting life quality and development, extinguished mankind’s necessary fundamentals and universal values for once and all. That’s why we have a problem called human rights, even though it became a subject matter first in 1789. That’s why we have a hole in the ozone… We desperately watch over what’s going on; instead of sparing resources for causes of pollution to prevent climate change, we choose over to invest fields in multiplying our money. One of every seven man is on the edge of starvation. It wasn’t valued enough to hit the first pages of newspaper that tons of sulfuric acid is poured from Danube, Hungry and steps away from in Black Sea which then be guests of our dinner table’s Over a billion people in the world haven’t yet heard the word “hello” on phone since they haven’t met with it yet.

And humanity is at the very last road bend…
In search of a new development indicator…
It shall be a “ruler” of…

At least it should heal the wounds of our planet’s – which we ruined for the last 150 years – and as guests of it, ours for a bit. Humanity, for the first time in civilization history hasn’t paid up its debt. It wasn’t loyal to its debt. In the name of production, delivery and consumption, it returned back on its debt. It even didn’t think about it. Until two walls cracked, one in Berlin, other in Wall Street!
This century’s development indicator will remove dollar from its throne. This is obvious. For the sustainability of humanity and life there are no other options.
Maybe new development indicator will have an alias like pomegranate.

Kind a like inflation basket… A bag…

To calculate;
A pinch of ethics…
A pinch of woman and children rights…
Of course indication of how fast and fair the justice system is…
Percentage of infant deaths…
Handful of organic agriculture production… Bouquet of organic fruits and vegetables…
Few glasses of water resource protection…
Few cubic meters of green energy…
Bouquets of artsy production…
And of course in terms of civilized norms, educated human force…
Renewable waste…
How much and how is the fight against drugs…
How animals is being treated…
Renewable forests…
They are all among parameters on pomegranate calculation of development …
Of course there are more to add on to this list. But it is certain that money in the bank, company’s quarterly P/L’s, credit card limits are no longer will be indicators of development. Not also in the means of size and power as well.
Dollar will never have the purchasing power to by a single pomegranate…