Dear readers,
The discourse over the right path to development started way before even the notion of official development assistance (ODA) was conceived in the speech of the then U.S. president Harry S. Truman in 1949. Already then his so called four-point plan was aimed at winning “the hearts and minds” of people in the developing world, but this notion mixed clearly with the idea that other than in the centuries before democratic and humanitarian ideals and not imperial ambitions should be at the heart of such development.
Ümit Akçay discusses the history of development theories from a perspective of the left and raises the question, what model of development can be sustainable. The question, if development assistance abroad is guided by imperial ambition or by the will to help the poor is still a hot topic.
ODA has been and still is a foreign policy tool that all countries, be it Turkey today or Russia and the U.S. during the Cold War use(d) to further their own interests. So the crucial question is then, what these interests are and what means are employed to achieve them. Developing interest based relations is not a problem as such, as long as this does not mean that the stronger partner is exploiting the weaker.
The topic of ODA as a tool in Turkish foreign policy and how it should be used, that Utku Güngör discusses in his article is therefore one that is timely, given the current debate over TurkeyÜs foreign policy. The topic is also one that is relevant for the Heinrich Böll Foundation, given that our work abroad is paid for by ODA money.
That questions are being raised, such as if and how the foundation then manages to secure its independence from the German government is a natural side effect of the discourse over development. However that the German political foundations have managed to attain this independence is a direct result of a new and multi-faceted view on development. Different concepts of development can and should exist side-by-side and different actors enrich the debate by constantly questioning the approach of the other.
Development, be it at home or abroad, is a term loaded with so many different meanings and through the last 60 years the debate over whether development can be planned at a desk or if it rather is the result of an anarchic and often random process has swung back and forth.
For Turkey, as a country on the government-declared track to catch-up with industrial development the debate how to plan such processes so that they find a balance between economic growth and sustainability is important. Bengi Akbulut’s article casts a critical look at the AKP’s concept of development in theory and in practice and Cengiz Aktar does the same for the government’s approach to agricultural policies.
Amartya Sen, one of the great thinkers on development of our time, who coined the concept of “Development as Freedom” already in 1999 argues that development - and especially economic development - is not an end in itself, but a way to attain a greater array of possibilities the individual can choose from to realize the greatest possible freedom for him- or herself. According to Sen, development requires not only economic possibilities, but also space for democracy that allows for dissenting voices as those nurture new ideas that prevent development from stagnating.
Such a holistic approach to development that has the opportunities of the poor as its cornerstone, but does not forget that economic possibilities are ultimately dependent on a free and fair society is a concept relevant for developing and developed countries alike.
On behalf of the Perspectives team
Kristian Brakel