MEHMET ÖĞÜTÇÜ OECD Küresel Forum Başkanı

Đstanbul, 5 Mayıs 2005 KÜRESEL BĐLGĐ TOPLUMU DENEYĐMLERĐ VE BAŞARI ÖRNEKLERĐ * Oturum Başkanı MEHMET ÖĞÜTÇÜ OECD Küresel Forum Başkanı Ladies and gentlemen perhaps we might start right away because as opposed to what our prime minister Erdoğan said the key issue ahead of us is not knowledge or money management which he described as key to building robust knowledge economy our challenge here is time management because we are way behind our schedule. Let me first say what a great pleasure it is to be in Istanbul for all of us I guess and Istanbul has become such an amazing place especially last week we had here the Foreign Investment Advisory Board meeting, we had the Annual General Assembly meeting of Asian Development Bank, German-Turkish Business congress and today Forum Istanbul. We ve heard quite encouraging statements from Anne Krueger about the health of Turkish economy and the list of homework that we need to do and prime minister himself has provided very refreshing and inspiring strategic thinking for the near term and future challenges. Today our intention is to discuss with this distinguished group of panelists the main building blocks of a robust knowledge economy, different experiences from Finland to India, from Japan to the UK and to provide some key and tangible messages to Turkey s political and business leaders on the next steps that need to be taken. Before we start the session it might be useful perhaps for each speaker to introduce themselves directly to the audience and also main elements of their presentation. Dr. Erkki Ormala Lord David Howell Yasuo Hayashi Emre Berkin Thank you. Before moving to our presentations with your permission I d like to share a couple of toasts, first about the stage management, the intention is that we will be as short as possible, each speaker will be given about 10 minutes maximum and then we will open the floor for discussion so that we might have interactive discussion and our aim is to finish

before the lunch time but there might be a little bit moving beyond lunch perhaps since we are starting already little late. 2023 aslında çok uzak bir hedef değil. Açılış konuşmalarında da belirtildiği gibi, ben bir hesap yaptım. 61 yaşında olacağım. Dolayısıyla, yalnız çocuklarım için istemiyorum 2023 e dönük hedeflerin gerçekleştirilmesini. Aynı zamanda bizim kuşağımız için de, bizler önceki kuşaklar için de önemli. Đnsanların hayatında 18 yıl gerçekten çok önemli bir devre. Ülkelerin hayatında ise, binlerce yılla ölçülen tarihin olduğu ülkelerde çok önemli bir tarih olmayabilir. Onun için benim tavsiyem, belki bugünden 2023 e değil, 2023 e uzanıp oradan geriye bakmak. Biraz daha belki futuristik dediğimiz bir bakış açısı. Bugünden 2023 e kadar neler yapmamız gerektiğini görmemize yardımcı olabilir. Hatta isterseniz 2005 den geriye 18 yıl giderseniz, 1987. Çoğunuz hatırlayacaksınız, taze hatıraları olan bir dönem. Ama ne yazık ki, insanlar genellikle hafızaları kısa olduğu için ya da onları bugünkü içinde yaşadıkları dönem çok daha fazla ilgilendirdiği için geleceğe fazla kafa yorulmuyor. Hükümetler de öyle. Sayın Başbakan dan son derece cesaret verici açıklamalar duyduk ama hükümetlerin de ömrü genellikle bir ya da iki dönem olduğu için 8 yılı geçemiyor. Dolayısıyla, ciddi bir ihtiyaç var. Geleceğe dönük stratejik yönelimleri kim düşünecek? Bu hükümetlere ya da bürokratlara bırakılamayacak kadar önemli bir görev. Çünkü sadece devletin uzun vadeli stratejik yaklaşımı değil, aynı zamanda bireylerin de, şirketlerin de, sivil toplum kuruluşlarının da geleceğe dönük tasarımlarına şimdiden başlaması gerekiyor. Bunun en güzel örneği, uluslararası şirketlere baktığınız zaman, örneğin Shell in 2050 ye kadar uzanan bir stratejik senaryo planı var. Bunun uyarınca dünyada enerji arz talebinin ne yönde gelişeceği, hangi yakıt türlerinin ön plana fırlayacağı önceden hesaplanıyor. Ya da Nokia gibi bir şirketin geleceğe dönük tasarımları, müşteri profili ne olacağı. Çocuklarımızın hangi sektörlerde, hangi akademik alanda uzmanlaşacağı, mesleki eğilimlerini etkileyeceği. Bunların hepsini önceden ciddi bir şekilde planlamak zorundayız. Bütün bunların içerisinde Türkiye açısından sadece iç dinamikler değil, aynı zamanda dış gelişmeleri de yakından izlemek zorundayız. Büyük Ortadoğu projesinin hangi yönde gelişeceği, Bakü-Ceyhan boru hattının önümüzdeki dönemde faaliyete geçmesinden sonra, arkasından AB nin gaz ikmal güvenliğini sağlamak için dördüncü bir arter oluşturulup oluşturulamayacağını, Çin in önümüzdeki dönemde dünyanın yeni ekonomik süper gücü mü olacağı, yoksa ekonomik bakımdan gelişmiş doğu kıyıları ile geri kalmış batı arasında ciddi bir ekonomik bölünme mi yaşayacağı, Hindistan ın Çin le birlikte yeni bir ekonomik güç olarak sivrilip sivrilmeyeceği, Rusya ile ilişkilerimizin nasıl gelişeceği hepsinden daha önemlisi özellikle önümüzdeki 10 yıllık dönemde Türkiye açısından AB ne katılım sürecinin nasıl gerçekleşeceği. Sadece Türkiye açısından değil, Avrupa nın bugünden başlayarak, önümüzdeki 10 yıl içerisinde nasıl bir değişim yaşacağı. Bunlardan Türkiye nin nasıl etkileneceği. Bunların hepsinin ciddi bir şekilde yakından izlenmesi, değerlendirilmesi ve ona uygun kararların geliştirilmesi gereken hususlar. Bugünü toplantımızın ana konusu bilgi ekonomileri alanında neler yapılabileceği. I think there is quite a confusion about what knowledge economy is, there is different terminology being used whether it is digital economy, information economy or new economy, modern economy our panelists are of course may be will answer this with greater authority but to my mind they are all subsets of knowledge based economy and knowledge based economy is not an e phenomenon and the important thing is that now the existing trends as the Finnish ambassador we have been discussing is the branding of the existing trends, we need a new concept, new terminology to define where we are heading for and we will be very much interested hearing what are distinguished speakers think about this.

I will now leave the floor to Mr. Emre Berkin, he is the ambassador of Bill Gate in charge of 79 countries. I d like him to focus more on how Microsoft will define knowledge based economy, experiences in the countries which he covers and more importantly please give us some key strong messages for Turkish business and political leaders. Emre Berkin Sanırım Sayın Emre Berkin oldukça önemli konulara değindi ve aynı zamanda biraz tartışılacak beyanlarda da bulundu. Belki bazı panelcilerimiz kendisine cevap vermeyi isterler. Still you didn t respond to the question of key policy message to the political leaders, if you have to give just one key message in terms of policy action, what would it be? Emre Berkin Thank you very much, you ve raised quite a number of important issues and also developed sort of controversial statements which some of panelists may like to address so next panelist is Mr. Hayashi and he is the right person to address the pertinent issues that we are going to discuss today because he can speak with authority being in a major multinational corporation at the executive level and having worked at government in telecommunication issues as well as in an international organization. Yasuo Hayashi Thank you Mr. Hayashi to compress all this impressive knowledge and assessments and recommendation into 10 minutes presentation. One sentence that you ve expressed I would like to underline, Turkey can leap to Japan s level thanks to knowledge intensive technologies industries without having going through the classical stages of development or there is a miraculous solution like this, leaping into current level knowledge economy, is this possible? Yasuo Hayashi: I think so yes by looking and getting experiences of other countries. We are grateful that he could make time while elections are going on in his own country. He is one of the brains in the UK for the conservative government especially in the past during Mrs. Tacher s government. So we are looking forward to how you see countries could design knowledge based economy strategies top down, bottom up and also the relevance of EU s Lisbon agenda for Turkey. Lord David Howell Thank you very much Lord Howell for your wisdom and sharing them with us and the recommendations that we have carefully noted probably one of them might be somehow controversial especially statement that avoid patronizing top down strategies and also don t elevate the knowledge based economy to a government strategy for policy level so this is something we ll explore further with the floor later. Faqir Chand Kohli Thank you very much Dr. Kohli. Certainly India is among those who are shakers and movers in IT and knowledge industry and we heard from you that this is largely due to the fact that

you put so much emphasis on education, massive resources but to be addressed is of course as Lord Howell mentioned spreading the benefits of economic growth to all segments of society as is the case in our country as well. Our next speaker represents household global brand which most of us carry in our pockets and not only that he represents Nokia Corporation, he s also served as a policy maker in government as well as in the EU context and one particular question that I will be very much interested is performance of his country Finland, wherever you look in international benchmarks and indexes always Finland tops the lists, what is the secret formula for that? Dr. Erkki Ormala Thank you very much Dr. Ormala. At the expense of standing between you and the lunch I d like to invite from the floor at least 2 or 3 questions so panel can answer them. Question: Thank you very much, my name is Mory special advisor to the Japanese government and my question is to Mr. Berkin, Turkey is in the sense credit card society, I think people use credit card so often but on the contrary e-commerce through the internet is not popular at all so what is the main program from the stand point of technology and secondly and more importantly how can we solve this issue? Thank you very much. Emre Berkin: If we look at the internet penetration in terms of usage in Turkey, it is estimated to be about 8% with an optimistic estimate and pc penetration is less then that it is about 6% and then as my fellow panelist very rightfully pointed out now besides pc s we are having other devices come into the market to access into internet and to access information. I think the lag between that usage and e-commerce in Turkey is a temporary thing, we see that take-up in the more developed countries because of the culture buying or trading something remotely over the phones and even TV channels was already there and existed, it just moved on to much better, richer and more effective and productive environment which is internet. There has been an issue again around the legal framework in Turkey which now has been to a greater extend resolved so I think it is eminent for e-commerce also in Turkey to take-off. I just would like to give you one other example when we talk about 8% and 6% I say they are estimates because I rely on market data but some of the numbers I know very well because they our numbers, hotmail usage which is our free e-mail service over the internet in Turkey is at 3,5 million people, messenger user in Turkey is also about 3.4 million people and the messenger usage over the last year more then tripled in 12 months time. From January to March it went up by 500.000 people so I think we are just at the verge of also seeing this take of in space of e-commerce. Thank you. Question: Merhabalar, Tevfik Uyar. ĐTÜ den geliyorum. Türkiye de e-ticaretin bu kadar yaygın olmamasının sebebini ben e-ticarete duyulan güvenin azlığı olarak görüyorum fakat yazılım şirketlerinin olsun, e-ticaret şirketlerinin olsun e-ticaretin aslında güvenli olduğunu, kredi kartı bilgilerinin kolaylıkla paylaşılamadığını ve buna yönelik güvenlik sistemlerinin var olduğunu anlatması gerekmez mi veya yapılıyor mu? Çok doğru ve çok haklısınız ve internet şu anda zaten 100% emin bir yer de değil fakat internet üzerinde kredi kartı tansaction ı yapmak sizin bir restorana gidip garsonun kredi kartınızla 5 dakikalığına gidip gelmesine göre belki 10, 20, 50, nerede yemek yediğinize bağlı daha emin ve daha güvenli ama haklı olduğunuz bir nokta var bunun bilincinin yayılması lazım çünkü sahiden Türkiyede gerek kredi kartı olsun gerek ATM kartı olsun kullanımı bayağı yaygın ve kredi kartı kullanımına oranla internet üzerindeki alışveriş ve ticaret hacmi

şu anda düşük. Ama ben bunun patlamasının an meselesi olduğuna inanıyorum ama bu sadece kredi kartı ve güvenlik meselesi değil aynı zamanda internet üstündeki içeriğin Türkçeleşmesinin ve daha zengin seçenekler sunulmasının da bunda payı var. Ben genelde iyimser değilimdir ama bu konuda çok iyimserim. On two points I respectfully disagree with my fellow panelists, one is the role state or the government has to play, I strongly believe in our country s governments, they have to play a role and they have to really lead and I am very open to challenge to making the statement because my fellow panelists are from two countries which I myself would place in top 5 of countries being closest to knowledge societies and I represent a business that is one of the ultimate private entrepreneurship so not in defense of any government or state, both in the US and now the EU we are at the courts with the governments and I myself as a person and as a businessman I am nova nir devletci but in this case in our environments I truly believe state and government has very impactful role to play and secondly I again respectfully disagree with you Lordship the 2010 Lisbon agenda, I think it is a OK plan but even if you have the best plan with bad execution you don t get good results so I think countries like ours they have benefit to be realized those plans but execute much better because I personally prefer being approximately right then being precisely wrong so think the experiences gained with the 2010 e-europe mission or vision I think countries like ours we have a lot to benefit from. Just two points that I want to make, one is yes government has a critical role to play but it has to be knowledgeable government and second thing is about Lisbon agenda if you go through this document that they have adapted in 2000 in Lisbon, the objective is to create most dynamic, competitive, knowledge based economy by 2010 and we are half way thru and one of the reasons why it hasn t worked as planned is that the reform package it contains about 28 main objectives, 120 sub objectives and 117 different indicators and also reporting system for 25 member countries which adds up to more then 300 annual reports, nobody reads them so it brings us to light regulation that Lord Howell referred to. Lord David Howell: Of course I appreciate and respect the point that the government must be knowledgeable and agile and flexible and be in touch with things that are evolving the processes which make up the future and adjust and adapt to them, that must be right but it is a question of degree where as the Chairman says the regulation becomes too heavy, intense and detailed it becomes counter productive. All I have to say and I hope it doesn t sound too skeptical is that for trying to design the future we better not entrusted it to economists because they are the ones who told us a lot about the future and the last 20 has been consistently wrong. No economist foresaw the indeed very few analysts foresaw the fall of the Soviet Union indeed we were being joined regarded as a permanent future of the future. Very few academics and columnists foresaw privatization move across the entire planet, actually we pitched the idea from Americans but it really started in Britain and spread right across and now it is from here to remotest parts of China. No one foresaw the Internet Pentagon device, which was gloriously unappreciated and unforecast by every single economic experts, no one foresaw the Asian currency turmoil of the late 90 s and no one has foreseen the evolution of oil prices, no one foresaw they would double last year, no one foresaw in 1980 s they would go down to 10 dollars and no one could possibly foresee what the hell energy pattern is going to do in the next 5 years or even 3 years so designing the future of 10 or 15 years is a bit ambitious and I think one has to be very careful in recognizing that future is a process, is not a destination. I repeat best educated people in Europe were the people in Eastern and Central Europe under the communist regime but again provided no outcome at all because they suppressed all competition and innovation. Thank you.

I would like to thank once more all our panelists for their excellent and very rich contents, statements and discussion and see you in the afternoon.