Turkey's influence in the world has been increasing for several years. One of their goal is that Istanbul would be an international financial hub. The words of the president of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, are instructive about where they see themselves fitting into the global financial structure. They view themselves in the near future as the center of a world financial structure based on Islamic financial principles.
Gul calls for a new global financial system
Turkish President Abdullah Gul said,
"the international economic system seems almost to act on a
balance of economic terror," emphasizing the need to formulate a
new global financial system.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the
International Forum on Financial Systems at Wow Convention Center in
Istanbul, Gul said the global economy had been going through very
turbulent times recently.
The root cause of the turbulance comes
from the issues in the financial system, which ultimately has impact
on the whole world, said Gul, addng that the idea of having the forum
was very important to search for alternative finanical systems and
methods to speed up the process of overcoming the crisis.
Gul noted that Islamic finance had
fallen behind conventional banking since the issue of Islamic banking
and finance instruments had long been only an interest area for
academics.
Reminding that the world has been
undergoing a speedy globalization since the 1980s, Gul said the
crisis which emerged in the American mortgage sector in 2008 had
impacted Europe first and then the rest of the world.
"Therefore the states spending
large amounts of funds to save the financial system in the beginning,
in time themselves began to face crises in their own economies. As we
assess the situation, we should be mindful of the fact that the
crisis has not yet been completely overcome, global risks and
uncertainities continue.
Gul said, "the international
economic system seems almost to act on a balance of economic terror."
"For that reason the architecture
of the modern financial system is increasingly being questioned. The
most important reason of this discussion is that the means and ends
have been confused," added Gul.
Highlighting that the fundamental
principle of the financial system, raising the prosperity level of
societies, had unfortunately been totally disregarded in the process
which ended with the 2008 crisis, Gul said, "the financial
system's architecture is based on expectations vis a vis a future,
instead of real economic value. Financial instruments are not used
for creating more employment, prosperity or income, but to satisfy
increasing greed on the part of the financial actors in the system."
