New Year’s resolutions for Turkey

We will eat healthy and exercise more. We will read more and watch TV less. So should be our resolutions for 2015, right? But that would be too mundane and easy after all. We as a proud nation of great heritage should do more.

BUILD MORE: “If you build it, they will come” as they say. And so has ordered the president. There will be very little questioning of the construction boom, and unfortunately it will continue to be the engine of the economy. Deputy PM Ali Babacan and PM Ahmet Davutoğlu will try to reverse the trend toward real economy and high technology investments, but as the FED tightens its monetary policies, Turkey will be busy opening up its new bridge over the Bosphorus with a very controversial name.

LEARN LESS: There will be very little enthusiasm about learning Ottoman because the new generation thinks it is unusable on Twitter or Facebook. Newspaper circulations will continue to drop, but surprisingly women’s magazines and gossip weeklies will sell more.

GO EAST: That should be the resolution of the main opposition party CHP. Kurdish peace talks will be taking a different direction if PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan do take the risk toward federalism/autonomy and a possible grand amnesty. So before it is too late for the rank and file of the CHP, they should immediately turn their attention to southeastern and eastern Turkey. By the way, both regions have completely different priorities about the issue.

HAVE FUN IN WEST: More and more urbanites will be taking their vacations in Europe and the U.S. even though the currency will be on the rise. Most young professionals, academics and even students are saving every single lira they can to escape every weekend from Turkey. The...