As we can see population over the entire balkans region is declining, our young people do not want to make kids anymore, there is also the brain drain meaning that our educated people are leaving our countries. Furthermore, we are in huge debts and there are foreign investors buying properties, infrastructure, visas and even citizenships in some cases. There are also tourists coming who are supposed to bring in money but they dont since most of our vacation sites are owned by foreigners as well and the tax goes to pay our debts. So, we are losing our demography, money, educated people, population, our lands, properties and infrastructure, autonomy, culture and opportunities to ever get better since our ability of investing alsoecreases with those ive mentioned above. Serbia, Greece, Croatia, Bosnia all have decreasing populations and what is worse is that those who remain in the country are the worse ones than those who move out of the country. Turkey has its population increasing overall but its turkic population is decreasing and kurdish and especially arabic population is rising there.
Now, how the hell are we going to solve this?
First of all, we have to ban our youth from getting out of the country and foreign investment. We must also take back our properties most probably by using force. It is apparent that we will not be able to buy them back so it leaves only one choice. We also have to go very harsh against organized crime and prevent rich people from exploiting the country and thats it. Then start again and dont do the mistakes you had done before.
So, why can we not do those? The first reason is that we would need a very authoritarian regime in order to do those reforms since there will be many people and countries opposing them. But if we do that, we will be blamed for being fascists, authoritarian, anti-democratic, dictatorships etc etc. If you try destroying organized crime effectively, you will be blamed for being too harsh on your citizens. If you try preventing your youth from leaving the country, you will be blamed for oppressing them and taking away their freedom. If you try taking away properties owned by foriegn citizens and companies, you will be accused for not obeying international agreements and thievery. If we try preventing them from selling us their products and ban their companies, they will literally attack us since it would lose them too much money or accuse us of becoming communists. As you can see, the system of the modern world is preventing us from solving these problems. This is exacly how imperialism works. They will want you to have liberalism in your country so that they can do whatever they want in your country. They can take away your educated people, they can literally buy your country, they can intervene with politics in your country. Now you might be asking, those rich western countries have the same system as well so why arent they the ones being exploited but us? Thats because when those countries became capitalist through the rise of the bourgeoise of their countries, there were a lot of land to be colonoized in the world. Now, all of those lands are occuppied so we dont have anywhere else left for us to colonize. A capitalist economy has to colonize and exploit other countries to get rich. In order for a capitalist country to be successful. However, all of those job sectors are occuppie already. So, cant we just produce our own products and use them? No because we cannot produce anything as efficiently and at a lower cost them western states.
As you can see, we are trapped. We cannot build strong corps and even if we could, we dont have the money to do so. We are dependent on them in every way. They are selling us their products, own our properties and infrastructures and take huge amounts of money out of our countries every year since they get the money we are paying in our respective countries. If we ever try going against this system, we will be accused of crimes, sanctions will be imposed on us and we will be excommunicated from the civilized world. Then there is only one choice left. Thats becoming dictatorship socialist states. Imagine yugoslavia, could the west buy property there? No. Could anyone exploit their educated people? No. Could the west pull them into immense amounts of debt and then collect their taxes, bully them into obeying their system? again, NO. In the end, we will either go against the west or we will become 3rd world ghost countries.
The Ottomans prevented this a little bit but now that we are divided, they can pull this off a lot more easily but thats a story for another time.
So you’ve decided to seize control of the entire region and give it to one person, eh? Who are you going to choose to represent the interests of all of the people? Once you hand power to that person, what mechanisms will you have to remove them if they make the region worse for the people than before? What makes you think you won’t be oppressed for your views, opinions, religion, or ethnicity by this dictator? What if that happens to your friends, family, or neighbors too?
Okay but we have to do something. How long are we going to allow this to happen. I mean is there any better solution you can offer?
So your idea is to adopt an authoritarian government is your go-to response?
Sure, but there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. There’s a number of different macroencomic actions that can be taking to spur investment or incentivize growth in specific industrial and commercial sectors. It can be as small as requiring government procurement to prioritize domestic produced goods, to really aggressive methods such as tariffs or forced domestic partnerships for foreign investment like China does.
You speak about population decline, but has the government addressed the root causes and brought solutions to bear? How expensive is it to raise children? If its a national priority, couldn’t the government subsidize things like mandatory maternity/paternity leave for prospective parents, government run childcare so those costs don’t fall on the shoulders of parents trying to work, cover nutrition costs for children at a national level, and even work to make sure housing is affordable and public education is of high quality.
Also, you talk about foreign investment as a problem as it needs to be stopped. While its possible to grow a nation purely from domestic consumption, it usually requires a bunch of things to go just right, and it takes a LONG time. Instead foreign direct investment is one of the best ways to shortcut national growth by bringing instant employment whose workers wages and employer’s profits are taxed to fund all of the above.
See? Look at that all kinds of things that don’t require handing over absolute power to a megalomaniac that will never give up power once they get it.
You said in a different post that you went to university. Did you take any Economics or Political Science courses? This is all fairly basic stuff.
As a Turk, I actually wouldnt mind if Greece took over Turkey if Greece promises to recognize our language, ethnicity and officially recognize some kind of relationship between Turk and Greek ethnicities which will justify Turks being in Anatolia. We lived in the same empire for centuries after all so I wouldnt mind doing it again. But if they keep thinking that they are the superior race following early 1900s western propaganda and keep deepthroating Germany while blaming everything on us Turks, then nah. Greece could actually gain a lot of soft power both in the balkans and the east but they prefer the west over us. As I said I wouldnt mind living in the same country with greeks and if greece took over turkey but if they try kicking us out of anatolia like they tried in ww1 then they can only dream about anatolia. Greeks need to learn more about the ottoman empire without the western propaganda. All balkan countries are extremely nationalistic because they are proud of building the strongest empires of the paast right? So, why not do it again and take back what was once ours?
You can’t say Erdogan is not doing his best already… and failing as miserably as one could.