Damages done by socialists to Turkey
M. Orhan Tarhan
April 02, 2008
No, this is not a mistake. I do not want to talk about the damages done by the Islamists. I wrote enough about those damages. Today I want to write about what the socialists did and are still doing to Turkey.
Beginning immediately after the Second World War, the show windows of Turkish bookstores were full of books directly or indirectly related to socialism. There was no literature explaining the free-market economy or the Western government system to counter-balance it. I have no doubt that somehow the Russians were behind this flooding of the book stores. Apparently America either did not perceive what that flooding would produce, or was not interested at that time to counter the Soviet move in Turkey. Those books brain-washed a whole generation of Turks.
Ataturk had died just before WWII and Ismet Inonu had skillfully sailed Turkey through the war without taking part in it, that is until the last moment. After losing the election in 1950, he steered Ataturk´s party, the People´s Republican Party, (CHP) to the left by inventing what he called "The Left of the Center " His follower Bulent Ecevit completed the hijacking and the Peoples Republican Party became a social democrat party. In Turkey, it became "chic" to be socialist.
The socialists did not have the courage to call themselves socialists, they called themselves social-democrats. They were hiding behind Ataturk. They propagated socialist ideas disguised as Ataturk´s ideas. They claimed to be Ataturkist but were not. They often gave Ataturk a bad name by calling themselves "Kemalists" although Mustafa Kemal had no ideology.
Ataturk had started a well-thought industrialization in Turkey, using tax-payers´ money, it was conceived as a nucleus "in the shadow of which other industries would flourish". When these industrial plants would be operating profitably, they would be sold to private enterprise and with the proceeds other industries would be built. Inonu converted this beautiful industry into a soviet-stile state-owned and-operated system . Nothing was sold and private industry was not encouraged. In the 1940´s and 1950´s Karabuk Iron & Steel Industry was selling steel below the market-price, ostensibly to control the market price, although its capacity was not large enough to control the market. But steel was sold to preferred customers who instantaneously would get rich by reselling the steel at the market price.
From 1950 to the present, CHP tolerated the formation of religious parties in the parliament, although they knew that it was clearly unconstitutional to have religious parties in Turkey. Each time the military took over, it closed those parties, but after democracy was re-established, these religious parties would reappear under a different name and the socialists tolerated them. Inonu started to build the first imam-preacher school. The socialists further multiplied them and thus, they prepared the ground for the religious parties to eventually coming to power.
The worse example of what the socialists did to Turkey can be illustrated in the example of the 1976 catastrophe in Karabuk. Karabuk was a little steel town North of Turkey. In that year I had offered two weeks of my vacation time to Tubitak, the government-operated industrial research office. I was told that Karabuk was in a crisis, and Tubitak was called to help. 49 % of the pig iron produced by the blast furnaces was off-spec, hence not saleable nor workable. It was sulfur that was too high. I was shocked. I worked for ten years quite near the blast furnaces and never sulfur was off-spec. It was very easy to remove the sulfur from row iron. It was a matter of adding enough lime stone to the mix. I am not a metallurgist, but if one works near two blast furnaces for ten years, one learns a lot by hearing from the operators who were one´s friends. I did not think that any red-blooded metallurgist would allow his blast furnace to produce 49 % "defective" iron. That simply could not be a technical problem. A young PhD engineer drove me to Karabuk. At the entrance of the town it was written that 110,000 people lived there. The religious and socialist parties had stuffed their supporters in the plant and made it uneconomical. That happened to all government plants. In those years it cost the government $8 billion a year to cover the losses of these plants. I could not talk to the general manager, because on that day he was fired after eight months of service. The average life of general managers was about two years. I talked to his deputy who was a PhD Engineer, a young and pleasant man. I think he answered all my questions honestly. I told him that such catastrophes cannot be technical. I suspected a systemic problem.
I asked him (1) "Can you buy your raw materials (Coal, Iron ore, lime stone) in the market at prevailing prices?" The answer was "No, we must buy raw materials produced by the government at government-set prices."
(2) "Can you sell your products at market prices?" –"No, prices are set by the Ministry of Industries. (3) "How do you pay your labor?" -- "That is negotiated with the labor union. They are well paid, actually better than engineers." (4) "What % of top graduates from the best engineering schools can you hire?" Here he laughed. --"We cannot touch top engineering school graduates at all, he said, because we pay about half of the market salaries. With those salaries, we hire the tail end." (5) "What is your turn over?"—" 95 % of our employees are newer than 5 years."
Based on the above information I had to conclude that Karabuk Iron & Steel Works did not qualify as an industrial organization. I did not know what it was. But it was not an industry. It was operating with un-trained novices who did not know how to operate. At those conditions everything should have come to a screeching stop. It was surprising that something was still moving. It seemed that a bunch of socialist-minded bureaucrats at the Ministry wanted "to play Industry" (Like kids play house) and messed up everything. Karabuk had a major systemic problem. I told that to the deputy manager. He had to accept it. To Tubitak, I clearly said in my report that the problem was not technical but systemic. It is the result of micro-managing by the ministry. To work properly, Karabuk must be converted to an industry. I know that they did not like my report. I don´t know what they did.
Most government-owned plants, the so-called KIT´s, have recently been privatized, i.e., sold to private enterprise. Even giving them away for free would have saved $8 billion a year. The socialists fought tooth and nail to stop privatization. The last vestige of socialism in Turkey is the People´s Republican Party of Deniz Baykal who is still an old-fashion socialist who believes in government ownership of industries and utilities. He is continuing to harm his country by occupying the opposition place in the parliament without opposing.
Most socialists in Turkey have never seen any industry in their lives. They are "Salon socialists". The best way of curing them would be to let them work in an industry for a while. After working for ten years in the coke plant at Karabuk, in 1951 the Marshall Plan gave me the opportunity to visit most of the coke plants in the United States, East of the Mississippi, to show how they are managed. I found out that in Turkey the coke plant was newer than most American coke plants, labor was more loyal to the company than American union labor, before 1951 most Turkish engineers were competition-winning, European or American-educated engineers who were decidedly better than the average American engineers. And yet American plants in a free-enterprise system were much better managed and more profitable than Karabuk. The difference was government-ownership vs. private ownership.
Beginning immediately after the Second World War, the show windows of Turkish bookstores were full of books directly or indirectly related to socialism. There was no literature explaining the free-market economy or the Western government system to counter-balance it. I have no doubt that somehow the Russians were behind this flooding of the book stores. Apparently America either did not perceive what that flooding would produce, or was not interested at that time to counter the Soviet move in Turkey. Those books brain-washed a whole generation of Turks.
Ataturk had died just before WWII and Ismet Inonu had skillfully sailed Turkey through the war without taking part in it, that is until the last moment. After losing the election in 1950, he steered Ataturk´s party, the People´s Republican Party, (CHP) to the left by inventing what he called "The Left of the Center " His follower Bulent Ecevit completed the hijacking and the Peoples Republican Party became a social democrat party. In Turkey, it became "chic" to be socialist.
The socialists did not have the courage to call themselves socialists, they called themselves social-democrats. They were hiding behind Ataturk. They propagated socialist ideas disguised as Ataturk´s ideas. They claimed to be Ataturkist but were not. They often gave Ataturk a bad name by calling themselves "Kemalists" although Mustafa Kemal had no ideology.
Ataturk had started a well-thought industrialization in Turkey, using tax-payers´ money, it was conceived as a nucleus "in the shadow of which other industries would flourish". When these industrial plants would be operating profitably, they would be sold to private enterprise and with the proceeds other industries would be built. Inonu converted this beautiful industry into a soviet-stile state-owned and-operated system . Nothing was sold and private industry was not encouraged. In the 1940´s and 1950´s Karabuk Iron & Steel Industry was selling steel below the market-price, ostensibly to control the market price, although its capacity was not large enough to control the market. But steel was sold to preferred customers who instantaneously would get rich by reselling the steel at the market price.
From 1950 to the present, CHP tolerated the formation of religious parties in the parliament, although they knew that it was clearly unconstitutional to have religious parties in Turkey. Each time the military took over, it closed those parties, but after democracy was re-established, these religious parties would reappear under a different name and the socialists tolerated them. Inonu started to build the first imam-preacher school. The socialists further multiplied them and thus, they prepared the ground for the religious parties to eventually coming to power.
The worse example of what the socialists did to Turkey can be illustrated in the example of the 1976 catastrophe in Karabuk. Karabuk was a little steel town North of Turkey. In that year I had offered two weeks of my vacation time to Tubitak, the government-operated industrial research office. I was told that Karabuk was in a crisis, and Tubitak was called to help. 49 % of the pig iron produced by the blast furnaces was off-spec, hence not saleable nor workable. It was sulfur that was too high. I was shocked. I worked for ten years quite near the blast furnaces and never sulfur was off-spec. It was very easy to remove the sulfur from row iron. It was a matter of adding enough lime stone to the mix. I am not a metallurgist, but if one works near two blast furnaces for ten years, one learns a lot by hearing from the operators who were one´s friends. I did not think that any red-blooded metallurgist would allow his blast furnace to produce 49 % "defective" iron. That simply could not be a technical problem. A young PhD engineer drove me to Karabuk. At the entrance of the town it was written that 110,000 people lived there. The religious and socialist parties had stuffed their supporters in the plant and made it uneconomical. That happened to all government plants. In those years it cost the government $8 billion a year to cover the losses of these plants. I could not talk to the general manager, because on that day he was fired after eight months of service. The average life of general managers was about two years. I talked to his deputy who was a PhD Engineer, a young and pleasant man. I think he answered all my questions honestly. I told him that such catastrophes cannot be technical. I suspected a systemic problem.
I asked him (1) "Can you buy your raw materials (Coal, Iron ore, lime stone) in the market at prevailing prices?" The answer was "No, we must buy raw materials produced by the government at government-set prices."
(2) "Can you sell your products at market prices?" –"No, prices are set by the Ministry of Industries. (3) "How do you pay your labor?" -- "That is negotiated with the labor union. They are well paid, actually better than engineers." (4) "What % of top graduates from the best engineering schools can you hire?" Here he laughed. --"We cannot touch top engineering school graduates at all, he said, because we pay about half of the market salaries. With those salaries, we hire the tail end." (5) "What is your turn over?"—" 95 % of our employees are newer than 5 years."
Based on the above information I had to conclude that Karabuk Iron & Steel Works did not qualify as an industrial organization. I did not know what it was. But it was not an industry. It was operating with un-trained novices who did not know how to operate. At those conditions everything should have come to a screeching stop. It was surprising that something was still moving. It seemed that a bunch of socialist-minded bureaucrats at the Ministry wanted "to play Industry" (Like kids play house) and messed up everything. Karabuk had a major systemic problem. I told that to the deputy manager. He had to accept it. To Tubitak, I clearly said in my report that the problem was not technical but systemic. It is the result of micro-managing by the ministry. To work properly, Karabuk must be converted to an industry. I know that they did not like my report. I don´t know what they did.
Most government-owned plants, the so-called KIT´s, have recently been privatized, i.e., sold to private enterprise. Even giving them away for free would have saved $8 billion a year. The socialists fought tooth and nail to stop privatization. The last vestige of socialism in Turkey is the People´s Republican Party of Deniz Baykal who is still an old-fashion socialist who believes in government ownership of industries and utilities. He is continuing to harm his country by occupying the opposition place in the parliament without opposing.
Most socialists in Turkey have never seen any industry in their lives. They are "Salon socialists". The best way of curing them would be to let them work in an industry for a while. After working for ten years in the coke plant at Karabuk, in 1951 the Marshall Plan gave me the opportunity to visit most of the coke plants in the United States, East of the Mississippi, to show how they are managed. I found out that in Turkey the coke plant was newer than most American coke plants, labor was more loyal to the company than American union labor, before 1951 most Turkish engineers were competition-winning, European or American-educated engineers who were decidedly better than the average American engineers. And yet American plants in a free-enterprise system were much better managed and more profitable than Karabuk. The difference was government-ownership vs. private ownership.
Print
Email
