The Last Emperor Clinton at Bilgi last Saturday

I wanted to share with you couple of points I picked up from Clinton's speech which I thought were not captured by the popular press:

First he advised the students to have a certain platform to view the world. He elaborated on his as below but told that each person needed to create his/her own vantage point(s) to make better sense of a world that seems to be getting ever more complex.

As a starter Mr President talked about interdependence (rather than globalisation, as the latter, he believes, has more economic connotations) as being the most important issue. However, he explained that this positive trend also had negative unintended consequences, such as breaking down borders not only between countries but also between companies, homes and individuals. These, in turn, make the world more unstable and unpredictable. The second issue that he saw from his platform was income inequality. There Clinton talked about his surprise that economic theory seemed to have failed since benefits of innovation and trade did not get disseminated through the economy. Economic gains continued to only accrue to the privileged few. Finally he saw the world as unsustainable as it is, here energy and environment being his main concerns – no surprises here as Gore probably has still his ear.

Second Mr President insisted that the most important question in current world order was “how” i.e. how good intentions could be put to work. His views are that interdependence makes the concept of “somebody else’s problem” is not suitable anymore. As such we all need to work together for the common good. In this process yet another issue that we all need to consider is whether we will concentrate on our differences or human commonalities. This is the key to solving most social and political problems.

Last but not least he was generally very complimentary about Turkey’s broader role regionally and globally as well as the performance of the Turkish economy. However, he asked the Turks to stay focused and not get swayed by incidents such as the flotilla tension with Israel. His closing remark was that Turkey needed “a world coming together and not falling apart”.