Turkey – Global Shift, the G-20, and Europe’s Double-Move

Think Tank 20: New Challenges for the Global Economy, New Uncertainties for the G-20 (The Brookings Institution) June 4, 2012, pp. 74-78

Izak Atiyas & E. Fuat Keyman *

It is a common truism nowadays to propose that the world as we know it is in turmoil and radically changing. Many of our assumptions about the world are rapidly falling apart. The tectonic forces are changing and reshaping global relations. Not only have the feelings of uncertainty and ambivalence begun to mark the nature of the present, but the center of gravity has also been radically shifting from the West to the East. Although written as early as the 1930s, Antonio Gramsci’s famous statement that “the old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear” captures the emerging reality in our international and inter-human relations.

* Izak Atiyas, Professor, Sabanci University and E. Fuat Keyman, Professor and Director, Istanbul Policy Center, Sabanci University

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