They left behind a vacuum, an inevitable sense of unfinished business, if one regards the vast array of issues in Turkey that remain unresolved and the lack of bold leadership.
This fact, as a sort of urgent concern, is brought to one’s attention with an annual event in the US held in memory of Mr. Sabancı. After all, his legacy was significant in the sense that he was a self-taught man who pushed forward the wisdom that will always remind us of the need for Turkey to understand its inner self, to fight back its demons and fears and to overcome barriers in order to belong to the world.
The event, called the “Sakıp Sabancı Lecture,” has now become an intellectual exercise bringing together experts, analysts and policymakers. In what has now also turned into a tradition, the lecture at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., is followed by a visit to Boston, where the alumni of Sabancı University meet with teachers at Harvard and celebrate adventures of the mind.
Paul Wolfowitz, Nicholas Burns and Richard Holbrooke were speakers at the earlier lectures, and Lord Chris Patten was added to the list this past week. In an address titled “Transatlantic Partners -- the challenge of multilateralism for Europe and Turkey,” Patten underlined the sense of urgency -- once again -- for the European Union to clarify its position on Turkey’s accession. His language was filled with wit and colored by crisp ideas, but gloom was predominant in his assessments, a sense of pessimism that was later shared by Francis Fukuyama and particularly by Kemal Derviş at a working lunch. The latter, now recruited by Brookings as vice president and director of its Global Economy and Development program, was surprisingly lucid in his assertions that a paradigm shift had taken place in Turkish-EU relations due to the ongoing global economic crisis (with unemployment as the concrete outcome), the “insincerity of some EU members” about Turkey’s accession and what he called a “Huntingtonian dimension.”
Derviş voiced concern that the young generation was moving away from the “known narrative” and that a new mode of communication had become necessary in order to “reset” the relations. After hearing Patton and Derviş, we were left with further questions rather than answers. The task ahead is enormous. Not even Sakıp Sabancı would joke it away.
If the Fifth Sakıp Sabancı Lecture was “sobering,” the surprise event of this year at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge was an exciting journey into the history of Sabancı Holding. For the first time ever, a Turkish business leader took the floor of the prestigious MIT business school and addressed prospective leaders (young fellows from around 30 nations), talking about challenges of leadership in family-owned companies in emerging economies. It was Güler Sabancı, not only a niece but also a beloved protégé of Sakıp Sabancı, the chairperson of Sabancı Holding, for the first time openly and analytically walking us through her family history.
Throughout the world, she told us, only 5 percent of family-owned businesses survive beyond the third generation. She was keen on taking it further for future generations, she told the crowd, but pointed out the need for change through constant search and professionalism. The last eight years of Sabancı companies were filled with proof of that, as Güler Sabancı described in detail. But, she added, “The business of business is sustainable business.”
The responses were enthusiastic. The questions showed insight into Turkish politics. Thus, when a lady from India asked the expected question, nobody seemed surprised. “With such a level of success,” she asked, “would you not think it is time to enter into politics?” The answer was a clear “No,” but were he alive, Mr. Sabancı would have intervened and assured us that his niece is perfectly fit and ready for the challenge.
