My Dear Colleague, Professor Richard Falk, Chairman of the Academic Council,
Professor Bülent Aras, Coordinator of the Intellectual Forum,
All members of the Academic Council,
Dear Participants,
First of all, most welcome to Istanbul, the city between the two continents, the historic city where all these issues have been discussed before. When this initiative, LDC Conference, started as a project we made an assessment regarding how it was handled in Brussels and in previous conferences. We especially requested two additional forums. One is the Intellectual Forum, the other one is the Parliamentarian Forum. Intellectual Forum was a new idea for the LDC Conferences. First of all, let me share with you why we wanted to add an Intellectual Forum to discuss LDC issues.
Of course we had also a new forum among parliamentarians. Parliamentarians are important to share views among representatives of the peoples, not only in official meetings, but among societies as well. We needed to have a new approach among the parliaments of the world in this sense, but Intellectual Forum was needed. Because meeting on LDCs and the feature of LDC is not only an issue of systemitical political questions, but it is a matter of mentality and philosophical orientation too. So the substance of the issue is not only a political discussion, but an intellectual discussion regarding the future of the humanity. It is an issue of mentality rather than a just systemic approach.
Secondly, we see this as a process not just one event, one big conference in İstanbul, a nice gathering of thousands of academicians, politicians, civil society representatives, parliamentarians, but we see this as a process which will continue until an economic justice established in the world. We are planning now for a ten years program. So from our perspective, all these activities will continue until 2021. There should be independence to make an overview, to make an assessment regarding the activities of the LDC Conference. Therefore we wish this Intellectual Forum, the Academic Council to discuss the issues of mentality, philosophical orientation and also to have a process, a continuing process to make an assessment on how the other functions are going on in order to achieve the objectives of this Conference. If it is a process, we should identify the entire process. This 4th LDC Conference is just at a right time when in UN and in all other international fora, there is a huge debate on the future of global order, on the future of global political order, cultural order and economic order.
Now, after this globalization, process of globalization, Cold War and many other new developments, we have to discuss more on the main principles and values of global order. As intellectuals, as opinion labors, as policy makers, we should agree on certain values and principles. About the political order and your role in this political order, the main principles are participation and representation. We want a political order which is multilateral, which is representative of humanity and which is participatory. We do not want to have a political hierarchy in the world where certain countries, certain nations have more to say for the future of political order in coming decades and centuries. We want to have more participation, more multilateralism and more representation.
When we talk on global cultural order, the main values we want to underline are inclusiveness and interaction, not exclusivist approach, not to exclude certain civilizations and cultures or not confrontation or clash of civilizations or cultures. We want to have more interaction; we want to have more inclusiveness. Therefore, the project of Alliance of Civilizations, as a UN project initiated by Prime Minister Erdoğan and Prime Minister Zapatero, got a great support in last six years. Now we have more than one hundred twenty partners of the Alliance of Civilizations.
Now coming to the economic order, what should be the basic principles of the future of global economic order? We had an international economic crisis, many countries suffered and now we are talking on a new financial architecture. But at the same time, we need to talk about a new economic architecture, a new global economic architecture based on certain values and these values are or should be justice and distribution as well as productivity and efficiency. If you have a productive and efficient economic order without justice, there will be a huge difference, gap at the distribution of income. You may have justice without efficiency, and then you will have a justice where all nations will be equal on poverty. We want to have productivity, efficiency together with justice and distribution and we should not sacrifice any of these for the other one. If this is the case, what will be the role of the future and the role of LDC at new economic order? Will there be a confrontation between developed countries and least developed countries or how will the people of the LDC countries contribute to the economic order? Will they be out of the historical process or will they be part of this historical process?
Then we need to discuss even more, first of all on an individual level. All of us should agree that all human beings have the same rights, economic rights in the sense of having same level of ontological existence. Somebody in New York or in a Pacific island or in a LDC country in Africa, as individual human beings have the same rights, the same dignity and the same honor and respect. That should be the principle we all have to agree. Regardless of their ethnic, religious, sectarian, geographical background or orientation, the ontological equality should lead to an economic equality and justice. Therefore we need to work on a new understanding of like Universal Declaration of Human Rights, part of that there should be the universal declaration of economic rights, equal economic rights of all human beings.
If we have this approach, this second level is the society or sectoral approach in the same state. You may have a very developed state or even a poor state but it depends on how you approach to different sectors of society in this country. Least developed countries, all of them are facing different situations, some might be more prosperous , some might be much poorer. If there is an inequality among the social society levels, then even in the most developed countries you have certain sectors which are below the poverty level. In many developed countries we will have this type of unfortunate sectors of society. So we have least developed communities or least developed groups in sight developed countries as well. Even in the United States, in big countries you have homeless people and sometimes in an underdeveloped country, because of the economic injustice, you may have very rich high-class. So how can we close this gap in the countries, especially in LDC countries? The best way is of course good governance and equal approach of income distribution.
Then we have state level or international level, individual level, society level and international level. In international level today, we all know that unfortunately there is certain terminology which reflects economic hierarchy in the world. Like in UN system, we have permanent members of UN Security Council. It means they are permanent, they will decide what will be happening, they have the right to veto, even if all other one hundred eighty five countries agree on something, that five countries have more right to say in politics. Similarly, in economic hierarchy we have G-8, we have G-20, we have OECD, we have developed countries, we have emerging developing countries, and we have least developed countries. So there are different terminologies reflecting these differences of economic inequality. There should not be difference between fortunate winners and unfortunate victims. We should have a new approach where all the countries regardless of their backgrounds, they should have a right of giving input to the future of economic order. Therefore, even in least developed countries, the terminology should be reassessed. Maybe we can find a better name, maybe they are least developed in economics, but they are much more developed in cultural sense compared to other countries. I can give you many examples, like Nepal, the place of authentic civilizations. So it doesn’t mean that the historical conjectural status of economic level reflects the level of development in all other sense. Therefore we have to have a new approach.
If this is the case, yesterday, during our press conference, there was a question raised to me. They asked ‘what is the main reason for the underdevelopment of least developed countries?’ or during the preparation of this conference, in all preparatory meetings, there was a debate between developed countries and least developed countries regarding the reason of this underdevelopment. Some say these countries are least developed because of colonial background. Therefore this unfortunate historical background should be compensated by those who are developed. The opposite view says this is not because of colonial background, but because of bad governance or corruption or failure of state or its institutions. Then the debate continues.
Instead of this debate, maybe we should focus more on what to do together for the future of these least developed countries. But if we are objective, we can say of course there is a share of colonial backgrounds regarding the destinies of these least developed countries’. Nobody can deny this. In 18th century, Bengal, today`s Bangladesh, was one of the richest places, regions in world’s economy relatively. Many African countries were relatively much richer before. This might be one of the reasons because of the colonial background, there is an economic inequality. We have to admit this historical fact. But at the same time, we have to admit the fact that today we need good governance, a better functioning political system, a much more accountable political life in these countries and of course, we have to think also about systemic problems of international order, especially after the globalization, ecological issues, climate change. Nobody can blame to these countries because of global problems which has arisen because of other reasons rather than the decisions of these countries or the characters of governments in these countries.
So we are facing a much more comprehensive challenge today. There is a huge globalization which affects the least developed countries more than other countries. There is an issue of transformation of nation state in these countries which creates certain problems for international economy that should be managed properly. And of course there is a need to have a new approach to redefine the system of international economic order. Of course in technical discussions, of course in the processes in international organizations in the World Bank, in UNDP, in IMF, in G-20 we will continue to discuss these issues. But what we need at this Academic Council is to have a much more sophisticated debate, to enlighten our work, the work of officials, and the work of the policy makers in the future so that there will be always an academic review to guide this. Therefore we decided to have this Academic Council thanks to our great friend, Professor Richard Falk. He worked very hard together with Professor Aras and they formed this group of intellectuals which will be continuing to work until the end of this ten year. We hope that their work will give us certain guidelines for all program, plan of action and for our projects in the future.
Thank you very much to all those who contributed this intellectual debate and thanks for your participation.
Thank you.