Undersea tunnel connects Asia to Europe

ROME – The day we drove up the Greece-Turkey border last Tuesday, they inaugurated a 13.6-kilometer rail tunnel under the busy Bosphorus Strait. The $4-billion mega project was a dream project championed by Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan when he was still mayor of Istanbul.

The thought of this mega rail project, set to move 1.5 million people across the Bosphorus daily simply blew my mind. In 2004 when they started the project, I imagine Turkey and the Philippines were not that far in terms of their economies. The difference I surmise, is that they had leaders who had big dreams for their nation rather than for themselves.

Delayed by archeological finds for many years, Turkey now has a rail tunnel under one of the world’s busiest waterways that connect Europe with Asia. Wow was all I could say at this daring engineering achievement. They are actually able to connect two continents, while we have been unable to link the Roosevelt LRT 1 terminal with the Trinoma station of MRT3. Commuters to this day have to go down at Roosevelt and walk or take a tricycle to bridge the few hundred meters to catch the MRT train.

The rail tunnel is not the only big project the Turkish officials have for Istanbul, a mega city of 14 billion people. There is also a third airport, a third bridge across the Bosphorus and a canal  parallel to the international waterway.

I understand the tunnel wasn’t exactly ready to be inaugurated last Tuesday and there were glitches in the first few hours of operations. But they wanted to make a big splash as part of the 90th anniversary of the Turkish Republic. The Japanese Prime Minister was a special guest inasmuch as the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JICA) financed $1billion of the $4-billion cost of the tunnel.

Prime Minister Erdogan called it the “iron Silk Road” in reference to the ancient trade route between Europe and China. As the BBC pointed out, the tunnel theoretically means travel by train between London and Beijing is now possible. When are we going to have national leaders with big dreams and have what it takes to make them come true?

Before some Cabinet members say we are a democracy to justify their inability to deliver vital infra projects, it must be pointed out that democracy is alive and well in Turkey too. Prime Minister Erdogan may be sometimes accused of strong man tendencies, but the fact is the Turkish people are able to freely exercise their right to dissent.

A democracy like ours, there were also protests over the  big projects.  Some residents complained about the impact of the infra projects on property prices that may drive out the less affluent from the city.

A recent example of democracy in action in Turkey was the protest from ordinary citizens over government plans to convert a popular square into a mall. It did turn out to be violent, but concerned citizens made it clear they will have their voices heard.

Visiting Turkey reminds me of a recent book from a Morgan Stanley funds manager who said in so many words that the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are a thing of the past. When you think emerging markets, you should think TIP (Turkey, Indonesia and the Philippines). I don’t know how we got into the same league as Turkey because it seems to me Turkey is way ahead of us.

Anyway, Ruchir Sharma, the Morgan Stanley banker who wrote about our being a breakout nation must have mistakenly thought that P-Noy could be another Erdogan. But as the Aquino administration seems to slowly break up over inadequate leadership, an update of Sharma’s book will be more skeptical on the Aquino administration’s ability to deliver on its promises specially on the economy.

Sharma did point out that being a breakout nation means economic growth must be inclusive or able to reach the poorest of the poor. That is simply not happening possibly because P-Noy is anchoring his hopes to reduce poverty on the handout Conditional Cash Transfer program. While the CCT is a good program whose impact may be felt several years hence, only job creation that will absorb our army of unemployed and underemployed will work to produce that sought after inclusiveness.

This means P-Noy must be able to dream big like Erdogan and have what it takes to deliver even as noisy elements in society opposed to change are causing political troubles. That is after all expected from the entrenched elite in any society. And as Sharma observed in his book, Breakout Nations, a country’s stagnant economy results from a few family owned conglomerates dominating the markets.

Still, if Sharma saw something in us to put us in a league with Turkey, we must seize the moment and ride with sentiment. But I think that for us to be a truly breakout nation like Turkey, P-Noy must get the people power revolution right.

It seems Turkey did. Attaturk, the father of the modern Turkish nation, must have done the right things because Turkey is an island of economic growth and political stability in its geographic neighborhood. In our case, our leaders since “independence” after WW2 leave much to be desired. We have yet to have our Attaturk and until then we are nothing more than political orphans with leaders who are everything but that.

Historical

Pastor Peter Tanchi quipped this joke in one of his talks to us during this Bible Study tour.

Husband to friend: I can’t discuss anything with my wife anymore. She always gets hysterical.

Said the friend: You are lucky... Mine gets historical... She recounts every thing I have ever done to aggrieve her.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco.