And what I mean here is that really kind of the social economic forces that are kind of at the core the motor of this new Turkish activism in the region is all about the right of civil society, the right of business community I know we keep talking about this and [IB] and how they kind of have grown within Turkey but you know it’s tough to spin over in terms of interest and in kind of opening markets more in the region. Civil society is also increasingly active in having like combined projects in the neighborhood. And so this is in a way part of this democratization we have more and more actors it’s not only now the army and the foreign ministry who is deciding foreign policy. You have a much broader part of the Turkish society which is having stake in this and which is pushing Turkey to open to the neighborhood.
One of the reasons why it is pushing Turkey to open to neighborhood especially on the side of the business community. Is that it is increasing it is in a way difficult for Turkey to access European markets. There is [IB] so technically it should not be difficult but because of the visa policy the [IB] visa policy which it makes rather difficult for Turkish people to come to Europe it is not a prime for like big enterprise of connection and can get the visa but for kind of the small or medium entrepreneurs they have some products that they could maybe sell in Germany or in Austria or somewhere. They can only send it and try to sell they can not kind of come with the product and try to sell it together and because of this frustration this has lead to a pressure on the Turkish government to, well since we can not do that really easily in Europe lets at least to open to the Middle East to the Black Sea which is economically less promising, I mean it is promising but in the short term it is not as rich and active as Europe is, but at least it is something we can do now and start develop even more business.
And so not only this just the very idea of the zero program policy of trying to have a more open corporative relation with all of the neighbors. The whole idea of opening the boarders and lifting visa which is n the last year so it is incredible how much Turkish government has reached visa free agreement with many neighbors not only neighbors there was recently an agreement with Indonesia but it has reached agreement with Russia which was a very huge agreement with Syria as well which used to be an enemy not so long ago and suddenly we have like open boarders and everything is fine and the whole talks in general about this kind of Middle Eastern union which it’s unclear how much is going to go but kind of the idea behind this we’re going to open boarder we’re going to corporate, and this is going to create more prosperity in the region which is going to [speed over] into stability and less conflict and this is a very European idea in a way this is all what the EU was about after World War II kind of creating this new open space of cooperating and then trying to avoid the big was that we had before.
So in terms of really the substance and kind of the more structural thing that Turkey is doing, it is in a way very much compatible withy the EU now there other problem that the EU has to deal with first especially the economic [IB] now so there is some good reasons for them not be so interested in Turkey right now, but at least I think it is important to have an understanding that things if you like kind of a little bit deeper than maybe just what is making the headline. What Turkey is doing is actually not too bad, yet there is a big problem and this is what I think Joshua was already mentioning that there is this big risk of populism and when, a confident Turkey is great an overconfident Turkey that goes over the top on some of these issues is a little bit worrisome.
And this I where again kind of having the Western anchor in general bit especially the EU anchor which is encouraging a lot of reforms at home and kind of putting some types of framework on how policy is very important and in that sense it is very there is a very kind of mutually reinforcing relationship between both the EU Turkey and it can be a mutually reinforcing it can also mutually wakening thing. So if the EU starts not looking at Turkey, Turkey will start not looking at the EU and go into different direction. But if there is a mutual interest it can [IB] something that’s really going to be at the advantage of both sides [IB].