Person: [IB].
Joshua Walker: I know the projection is, currently Turkey is at 72 or 73 million and by 2015 that’s supposed to be up to 80 in the 85 range, so I mean that’s, I don’t know….
Person: Significant increase.
Joshua Walker: That’s a significant increase yeah.
Juliette Tolay: [IB] Still going pretty fast but just expected that within 10 or 15 years that will be a slowing down of the growing because more and more families settled down with one to two. So it is going to slow down in the next 20 years.
Moderator: Go ahead.
Person: [IB] from Central DC, thanks for presentation. Both of you have talked about the biggest problem, the biggest risk is increasing populism of the nationalism [IB] skepticism and anti-Americanism and also I can add Pan-Islamism maybe in internal politics of Turkey, but there are a few factors related with them as I guess, firstly taking with the context of identity of Turkey. Talking within that context of philosophy and also civilizational based culture and also history from Turkey’s perspective. The other one is the strategy concerns such as contradicting perceptions and perspective to the issues such as combating with the terrorism such as PKK and the attitude and manners of US and EU. Such issues and so that if they [once] developed in a such a manner that reinforce [eventually] each others. I think, I wonder whether you can, you’ll agree with me there is a lack of that vision both for US and EU in seeing Turkey in both [IB] do you agree with me or what do you think?
Joshua Walker: So I’m trying to figure out exactly what you were laying out, let me paraphrase and see if I get it. Basically the way in which America is looking at Turkey doesn’t fit the Turkish mindset. So just to expand a little bit for those who might not be as well versed in Turkey, I think the narrative in Turkey has shifted from kind of being a small kind of nation state that’s on the edge of Europe that’s fighting against the Soviet to being a central power. In other words Turkey is now not only just about Turkey it goes back to the Ottoman legacy the Turks were in over 30 successor states. It’s a real power and Turkey should be consulted, Turkey should sit at the table, you can’t tell Turkey what to do anymore and I think that fits generally and you are right. Many of our European and American friends don’t realize this yet. Now to be fair I don’t think that Americans ever really act that way, even thought the Bush administration gave us a bad name in terms of being kind of a [cowboy] diplomacy in which he told people what to do, this administration came out with open hands and I think one of the more significant factors that’s overlooked a lot in Turkey is the fact that Obama went to Turkey for the first visit of his bilateral visit and the public opinion, the change in perspectives didn’t change. I mean its amazing the Trans Atlantic train survey the German [Marshall] firm does show this increase of unbelievable proportion in Europe where there was a, called the Obama bounce right in France and Germany etcetera in Turkey didn’t happen and many people ask us what is going on. What is wrong with that country are you guys, is there something wrong with Turks? And I say well yes, there is a lot of things wrong with Turks just like there’s a lot of things wrong with Americans.
Turks really do honestly believe there is no friend of a Turk except himself. That mentality has to change right? And think that one of this factor that you have is kind of, these unique features in Turkish American relationship and the PKK and the nationalist kind of Kurdish movement is the biggest one. The fact is the Kurds are the largest people group without a state right? Turkey has the largest number of cards in it until that problem that issue is resolved in a democratic manner it seems to me that Turkey is always going to have trouble in the outside world. Because any time Turkey criticize any other country the first thing they do, I mean look what happened Israel. Turkey said that you guys are committing genocide against the Palestinians, what did Israel say? They said don’t lecture us about genocide. Referencing what our friend mentioned earlier. The second thing is look at the way you treat the Kurds that’s really difficult right?