Topal Ali is charged with tracking down the two lovers. “If he wants, although there is no rain, he tracks dry soil, rocks and even birds… As long as a part of its wing touches the soil even a little bit. Especially humans! He can smell humans even if they had passed by the road three days ago.” The villagers beg Topal Ali not to find clues leading to the lovers and to pity them. Ali feels pressure from hundreds of villagers and decides to pretend not to find traces of the lovers. However, one of the villagers, Kel Ali (Bald Ali), explains Topal Ali's weakness when it comes to tracking people: “Topal follows the clues of even his father. Even when he knows that they will hang his father when he finds him, he cannot help but track his father. He is a good, nice man, and he feels sorry for the lovers, yet he cannot help tracking them. Nothing can prevent him when it comes to tracking. Even when he knows that he will be killed and he will eventually see death, give him a clue and he will follow it.” Starting to track İnce Memed and his darling, Topal Ali does not want to find clues. He knows that once he begins to track people, he cannot help but find them. However, he still cannot help it. He starts following the clues. The clues lead him to where the two lovers hide. While Topal Ali is glad to find the clues, he feels deep sorrow for catching the lovers.Is a strategist a “Topal Ali”? Would his experiences, skills and tracking abilities encourage him to follow the clues to the end even if the issue would harm him/her eventually? Kemal presents tracker Topal Ali to the readers in his novel of “Memed, My Hawk.” A strategist is a person who leaves his feelings and political views to one side and evaluates things in an impartial way. Tracker Topal Ali is also a strategist in a sense. Following clues like a strategist, Ali collects new data, evaluates them and analyzes them using his experience and knowledge. A strategist is successful if s/he is rational. At the same time, strategy is a natural skill like math, music and sports, and it is also a lifestyle shaped by skill. If this natural skill is developed, genius can be achieved. Other than discovering something new, it is also important to be able to see incidents from different perspectives.
In Turkey, industry is transitioning from labor-intensive sectors to technology-intensive sectors. In the new world, where raw information grows, mobility increases and time becomes more and more important, the need to analyze gradually increases. For this reason, think tanks, which are institutions where data are processed and analyzed, gain importance. Foreign policy actors as well as the process of creating new foreign policies have transformed. Think tanks can take their place in international platforms where the state cannot enter. Forming a foreign policy for Turkey in cooperation with think tanks and informing think tanks about foreign policy are in Turkey's interests.
The war in South Ossetia (Aug. 8-12, 2008) proved the importance of think tanks for Turkey's foreign policy. The war indicated that Turkish think tanks, which have almost a decade of history, will begin to have an important place in Turkey's foreign policy. Turkish think tanks informed the public, made analyses and published reports during the war. The same sensitivity, the same speed of making decisions and the same kind of analyses would not have occurred in state offices, in political parties and in Parliament. Just as the US entering Iraq showed the importance of news stations that presented viewers with a 24-hour live broadcast of the situation, the war in South Ossetia proved the importance of think tanks in Turkey.
