What is National and Local?

We always say that if you are doing something, it must be national and local. 

Or it is always a matter of debate, we are national and local, you are not. No, we are national and local, you are not! It's like appeasing something, I won't tell you what it is now.

It was a slogan back in the day, we used to say that domestic goods are the good of the country, it was a good slogan.

I wrote in one of my articles, I even calculated how dependent we really are on foreign currency. 

In terms of the general economy, we are actually quite dependent, especially in terms of energy and the technological equipment we import. We also spend a lot of money on importing raw materials. But for example, when I did the calculation for tomato prices, the foreign currency dependency was 15%. So it is not that high. If we can find a solution to the energy issue, this rate will be much lower. 

In fact, if we calculate the foreign currency dependency of many agricultural products grown in our country, I think it would be around this level. That is because of energy, transportation, imported fertilizers and seeds. 

The import of technological goods also puts a lot of strain on the country, I wish we could develop our own domestic technology. There is actually no reason why we cannot do it yet. We have potential brainpower, and raw materials and resources can be obtained locally if desired. 

I think we need to create opportunities for young and dynamic minds. Unfortunately, there is a mentality in the country that what goes goes and what stays is ours.

I have previously written a very detailed article in a series on what we can and should do to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy. Those who are curious can look at the details of the subject in this series of articles. 

As I mentioned in the article, our dependence on foreign currency is very high due to the wrong choices of those who are currently in power in terms of energy, and even those who were in power before, and it was not less in the past, but now it is much higher than it once was. Increasing demand plays a big role in this, but this is no excuse. The important thing is to plan for the future and take measures accordingly.  

If we want, we can correct these mistakes and make energy supply largely domestic and national. 

But as I said, since we cannot develop our own technology in this regard, we need large investments in foreign currency to reduce foreign dependence in energy. Instead of using energy resources that are dependent on petroleum products, that is, energy resources that are not available in our country, we should invest in energy resources that are available in our country.

In my opinion, as long as these major mistakes in political preferences in energy production, incomplete investments and even faulty investments continue, we will not be able to recover as a country. At least we can take some measures in the short term to use the available resources in a more balanced way. 

That is why I think we should have turned to different energy sources instead of making our country meaninglessly dependent on foreign energy, as has been done in recent years. We are currently paying the world's foreign currency to foreign countries every year because of the mistakes made. We are also experiencing the problems arising from this situation together.

For example, as I have examined in a special article, I think we need to start making serious investments in fuel hydrogen. Also, although there are so many seas around us, we do not make use of wave energy for some reason. But as I said, hydrogen is important. Hydrogen is really a candidate to be the fuel of the future. Many developed countries are already doing serious work on this issue, and we should start doing something about it as soon as possible.

Of course, I am not saying that nothing is being done to find energy sources, as we all know we already have dams, wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear power plants and some work is being done to extract our own natural gas. Even though we do not have the upfront investment cost of the nuclear power plant according to the contract, with the purchase guarantees given, I think we will buy the most expensive electricity in the world. Maybe if the state subsidizes the electricity purchased, this high cost will not be reflected on the consumer, so it may not affect electricity prices much. But subsidization means paying back the upfront investment cost to the investor gradually. Just like bridges and airports. In other words, if we had made the investments by paying for them ourselves, maybe it would have been cheaper for us, let's look at the bright side, let's say it would have been the same. This is my well-intentioned criticism of all investments.

The situation with wind and solar panels is not as bright as it is said to be. Investment costs are completely dependent on foreign currency, because the technology and equipment are completely imported from abroad. Moreover, despite the world's foreign currency spent on these issues, the electrical energy obtained from these investments so far corresponds to a small proportion of the need. So we can say that we are obtaining very expensive energy again. Perhaps if such investments increase in the future, this ratio may increase positively and energy costs may be balanced to some extent. 

In any case, these investments also have maintenance costs. These expenses also mean foreign currency expenditures. In other words, these clean energies are also foreign currency dependent energies.

However, I appreciate the work being done on natural gas exploration. The search for new sources of natural gas should continue and the feverish efforts to extract the small amount of natural gas found in the Black Sea are promising for the future. If these studies are concluded, at least in the short term, they may reduce our dependence on foreign currency in energy to some extent. 

But again, the technology and pre-investment costs are imported from abroad, so these investments are also foreign currency dependent. Also, I don't know exactly what kind of shares foreign companies have in the extraction of natural gas. No one knows for now because the contracts are covered by trade secrets. But I think there are risks that if one day these contracts are made public, we may encounter unpleasant surprises.

After reminding us about energy, let us return to today's topic. 

Domestic goods belong to the country, everyone should use them. It is a really good slogan. I think we should teach it to our children.

In fact, our country is a very big country, we have a lot of underground resources, we don't have a lot of mineral reserves, but we still have a lot of mineral resources. I wish we had oil, but unfortunately we don't have any significant oil reserves except the reserves in Batman and neighboring provinces. What can be extracted is at most 5% of the need, maybe a little more. TPAO is currently extracting around 18,000 barrels of oil per day from the region. If the private sector also extracts this much, it would be a maximum of 35,000 barrels. In 2015, the daily oil consumption was 796,000 barrels. I have not been able to find out how much it is now. Now the need must have increased, so I can even say that I made an optimistic calculation in terms of the ratio. If the daily need increases, the ratio will decrease since what can be extracted is constant. Math! There are so many speculative news on the internet, one doesn't know which one to believe. Let's not get stuck.

There is no oil, but we have many minerals underground. Turkey is in the category of "partially self-sufficient" countries in terms of mining. In other words, we are not a mineral-rich country. Being a mountainous country has a big share in this. Either we haven't explored enough to find out what we have, or we really don't have much, unfortunately.

I recently read news that there were jelly beans among our potential reserves, and I was quite happy that they found something interesting. But unfortunately, like some questions on game shows, this news was misleading. Someone made fun of it, misled the wise ex-mayor of his time, the naive ex-mayor of today. I can't help thinking that I wish it was true, at least they would have distributed it to children in schools and our children would have been happy. Nevertheless, I think it was useful and good that there were people who were happy about this news, even if for a short time, and that this humorous news brought joy to the country and lifted the spirits of the nation, which was in a black mood economically. There is a need for joy in human life.

Jokes aside, boron, which has 72% of the world's reserves, is the leading mineral we mine. But boron is not a mineral with many uses. Yes, it is a valuable mineral, especially in the glass and ceramic industry as a heat resistance additive. We all probably have a boron product at home. For example, I use it to make omelettes in the oven in the morning.  Boron can also be used in military technology, even in space technology, but as I said, although it has nearly 400 uses, it is generally used as an additive, so it does not have a big market in the world. Therefore, its contribution to the national economy is very small.

In fact, there are 90 types of minerals and minerals produced and traded in the world. Of these, only 22 types are extracted at an exportable level in our country. This is also limited in terms of reserves. 28 species are only available up to us, and 27 species are not even sufficient for us. We import the part we need. In fact, 13 types of minerals do not exist in our country at all. These, too, have to be imported in their entirety when needed.

If you ask what are the valuable minerals mined in the country, in order of value, I can say gold, copper, boron, bauxite (aluminum raw material), iron, chromium, tungsten, sulfur, manganese, antimony, uranium, mercury, phosphate, salt, hard coal, lignite, lead, zinc, amyant (asbestos). Of course, marble, natural stones, nugget stone, Oltu stone, dolomite, gypsum, quartz sand, bentonite, emery stone, calcite, cement raw materials, pebbles, clay and various salts are also abundant natural resources in our country. 

There is a small amount of gold, but I wish there were diamonds, don't you? At least we would have air. We would say that we also have diamonds, maybe we would give diamonds to the bride and groom instead of gold at weddings. It would also be a better investment tool for under the pillow because it would be easier to store. Unfortunately, we don't!

There is chromium, but not nickel for some reason. The mining town in the north where I worked was particularly rich in nickel. I have some small nickel stones at home, I was able to bring a few back once. Normally it is forbidden, if you try to take a big stone out of your suitcase at the airport they make you leave it back. That's why I was able to bring a small stone or two, although there were all kinds of metals there, from gold to platinum, copper to aluminum. A meteorite fell there once. I mentioned it in one of my articles.

Yes, we have so many underground resources. But since we cannot process most of them ourselves, we sell them only as raw materials. And then we buy it back ten times more in cell phones and technological goods that we import from a to z.

Are there only underground resources in our country? No, of course not. We also have surface resources.

I think our most valuable resource is water. But let me not go into that now. We will examine it in detail in a separate article one day.

We are the country that produces the most hazelnuts in the world. But the chocolate companies that buy our hazelnuts sell our hazelnuts back to us at who knows how many times the price. For a while, they used to give hazelnuts on airplanes. They came up with a slogan in the advertisements that it could be used for other things. But they failed, they couldn't make hazelnuts a brand, and we are once again in the hands of chocolate companies. 

We are a tea country, right? Who is the leading country in the world in tea? England. Does tea grow in England? No, but for some reason the British eat the cream of the world tea trade. Why is that? Because we don't have a brand that is famous worldwide. Even in Russia, there is no Turkish tea in the markets.

We taught coffee to Europe, even to the whole world. We don't grow it, but in the first written document about coffee from the Middle Ages in Europe, it is written that "Turks drink it and some of the diseases we have are not seen in them, and their skin is very bright because of it". Yes, Turkish coffee is famous all over the world, but is there any economic benefit for us? No! Have we been able to make coffee a brand so that it can be useful? But coffee culture, from cappuccino (cappuccino) to espresso, latte and Americano, has become a western culture. They cannot recover without a cup of coffee in the morning. Even when we go to a café, we order these instead of Turkish coffee. However, the ancients used to say that a cup of coffee is worth forty years.

Yogurt? The whole world got the word yogurt from us, but in America they think yogurt is of Greek origin. There are world-famous companies making all kinds of fruit yogurt, not one of them is our company. 

Cheese is the same, again Bulgarian or Greek cheese is famous in the world. Anyway, the word cheese is Persian, there is no Turkish for some reason. So it is not actually our culture. It is really interesting!

Cotton? We import it from outside now. In terms of textiles, we are a country of intermediate goods. We sew, but it is the Italians and the French who make money. We don't have a proper brand, and the ones we have are foreign words, as if we are ashamed of our language. Mavi is the only one I have to admire here. But I think it is not at the desired level either. It needs to spend more effort, it needs to produce fashion.

Even corn came from America, but it went to Europe from us. Europeans called it Turkish grain, or Turkish wheat. But popcorn was not learned from us for some reason. Again, for some reason we could not make Turkish wheat a brand.

What about olives? Turkey is the motherland of olives. Do you think anyone in the world knows Turkish olives? Which country do you think is world famous for olive oil? Italy, France. I don't have much more to say on this subject, Turkey is the motherland of olives, but it is not recognized. 

As if it wasn't enough that we closed down our sugar factories under the name of privatization, we started to produce sugar from corn syrup instead of sugar made from sugar beets under foreign pressure. Here is the real truth for those who claim to be local and national! Then everyone gets diabetes, even young people.

Examples are many. From a country that used to feed itself from wheat to meat, from fruits to vegetables, we have now become a country that imports everything. 

Although our phosphate deposits, which are the raw material for fertilizer, are so rich, we pay the world's foreign currency by importing even three-penny fertilizer. Then everyone from the producer to the consumer at the end of the chain complains about the situation.

The age is the age of globalization, I understand this very well, so there is no point in producing everything in the country. This is understandable. Capitalism! 

But I think the transportation problems, especially during the pandemic, reminded the whole world of the importance of producing some things within the borders of the country again. I think we should take lessons from this situation and mobilize for domestic goods again. 

We have plenty of underground resources, plenty of surface resources, and especially youth, which no one else has. 

Let me end this article by saying that we should appreciate our youth.

Love and respect to everyone from Moscow.