Out had gone the one-way traffic hurtling through the center and in had come traffic lights so that once again we the carless would get a crack at crossing the road.As if to order, a garbage truck ground to a halt at the lights facing me. It was the same sort of truck you now see all over the world, the type with massive jaws at the back, which are great at grinding the rubbish and just as great at grinding up the feet of their workers according to many a television hospital drama series. But the wording on its side caught my attention. Nevşehir Belediyesi Arıdıl Temizlemesi, it said, and suddenly I realized that we were another step further down the privatization path. Arıdıl? They are -- or were -- a firm of cement makers. Now, it seems, they’re also into refuse collection.
Increasingly, I have a sense of déjà vu, albeit in a completely different country. During the 1980s, Britain embarked on the process of privatizing everything that moved. As so often, a combination of factors came together to make it seem like the only way to go. Government and local councils were desperate to keep costs -- and taxes -- down. At the same time there was a strong conviction, especially in the Conservative Party, that people on the public payroll were a lazy lot of good-for-nothings who couldn’t be relied upon to do a decent day’s work. Privatization was the stick that would bring greater efficiency, the British public was told, although those on the left clung on to the idea of public ownership. I was one of those deluded naysayers, the sort who refused to buy shares in the newly privatized utilities companies as if this would have any consequence other than to leave me poorer than more cynical friends who snapped up the shares, then sold them on at a quick profit.
Older and hopefully wiser, I feel a whole lot more pragmatic about the process nowadays. “They’re selling off Dösim,” a friend wailed, and I thought of the souvenir shop up at the Open Air Museum and decided that, no, I didn’t think selling souvenirs was something the government needed to have a hand in. Refuse collection in London seems none the worse for privatization, so welcome Arıdıl. Telecom privatization is another success story. But electricity, gas and water? The railways? Is anyone any happier with these services now that they must keep changing suppliers to get the best deals? And that’s in the UK where consumer power still has some vestige of meaning. I’d love to think that Turkey would copy only the success stories, but that’s probably as vain a hope as dreaming that a Labour government in Britain would renationalize the railways.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
