Özel underlined the importance of contextualization and analysis.
By Utku Özgür L12
Writer and academic Soli Özel was a frequent campus visitor this year, lecturing in classes in addition to giving a series of talks, with alumni and parents joining some of the illuminating discussions. Lise 12 student Utku Özgür interviewed Prof. Özel for RCQ about this experience.
How did it feel to be back at RC?
It really felt wonderful. The school has changed considerably, but memories rush to your mind, and the most important thing for me was to be in a position of teaching rather than learning inside the classroom. I had basically two dreams when I graduated. One was to give the commencement lecture, which I did on the 30th anniversary of my own graduation, and the second was to be able to teach here at Robert College. This year, I did it and am elated. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve accomplished whatever I sought. Now I can retire!”
You did after-school lectures in the Heritage Room and you also gave lectures to the comparative government students. Which was more interesting?
In class, the success of your teaching is a function of numerous things: the mood of the students, whether they slept well at night, whether the class is too early, and whether the topic is of interest to them; especially the interest part changes from topic to topic. As time progressed and we had more meetings, they began to appreciate why I thought that we were going through extraordinary times and why it was not a bad idea to pay attention to what is going on. In that sense, I’m satisfied. Some students are obviously more interested and more engaged with those topics than others. They raised a lot of interesting questions that made me think as well. The afternoon sessions were less crowded and attendance was self-selected. Therefore, for understandable reasons, they were far more challenging and maybe far more intellectually stimulating.
Why do you think it’s important for youth to understand and analyze current political issues?
We live in the digital age which makes us oblivious to anything except for the present and the immediate present. My own inclination has always been to contextualize things to better understand them, and that necessitates that you have a sense of their genesis or their historical trajectory so you can invest meaning into what you’re witnessing. Because I think we are going through an extraordinary time of reconstructing world order and because your generation is going to be living for the next 60 years with whatever is being constructed, I owe it to you as a teacher to give you some elements, which would make it easier for you to understand the dynamics of this new age, and then whatever you do with it is up to you.
Due to our decreased attention span, our generation may not necessarily pay so much attention to what is discussed. Do you have any recommendations about this?
It’s the age of the smartphone and a period of rushing everything. And there is no cure for it, unless you discipline yourself to not spend too much time with your digital gadgets and then force yourself to have the discipline of reading. Maybe reading is overrated. The previous generations’ habits have certainly been formed by reading. Belatedly, perhaps everywhere in the world, or certainly in the developed world, they’re trying to get students to not spend much time with their smartphones. They’re being banned in high schools. I think those are steps in the right direction. I’m afraid that might be a bit late.
How do you think technology has affected or will increasingly affect developing countries like ours?
An advantage of developing countries has always been that you carry on with the technologies that are invented by others, and in a way that economist Alexander Gerschenkron called “the advantages of economic backwardness”; that is, you build your laurels on the basis of what others have already built. But it’s also a trap, because then you are kind of beholden to whomever invented those technologies and that may lead you to not carry on with your work. It’s a double-edged sword. But, technologies that are developed for developed countries, let’s say, in a production sector, will reflect their needs, which is labor-saving. Whereas in developing countries where there is a surplus of labor, is it really the most appropriate way to use capital for labor-saving technologies used in production? It’s not always one size fits all. You’ve got to think these things through.
You said that we are living in an age of unprecedented change.
I don’t know if it’s unprecedented because I’m sure that when humankind moved to agriculture, that was really big. Transitioning to the industrial revolution - in the span of about 25 years, Britain’s population became urban or urbanized from being a predominantly rural population. This is a transformative age we’re living in. The unprecedented thing is the speed. I’m sure the transition to industry was faster than the transition to agriculture. The transition to the digital society is certainly a lot faster than the transition to industry.
Do you think these technological and economic powers are more important than social and political orders?
History has taught that capitalism can be suited to almost any type of political order. Given the fact that by the end of the 19th century, the democratic United States and the autocratic or semi-autocratic German Empire were both industrially ahead of Britain suggests that they did not have any problems dealing with capitalism. Germany’s problem was that their industrialization and their conservative social order created tensions that came to a head in the 1920s and the 1930s. The process of creative destruction took longer in Britain, and shorter in Germany and latecomers. The speed and the incongruity of social norms, habits and capitalist development created a reaction to unfettered capitalism, and the Nazis or the other authoritarians took advantage of that. Nazi Germany was every bit as capitalist as any other, but it was a different type of capitalism, not necessarily anti-capitalism. Authoritarian or totalitarian regimes are not necessarily incompatible with development, although you can make a case that under democratic regimes, in a certain type of capital accumulation, democratic regimes would be more amenable for higher growth rates and perhaps more stable social and political environments.
People living in democratic countries in the Western Hemisphere may be transitioning from thinking of democracy as an inherently positive thing to maybe giving up some of their rights for more economic growth.
Or for order. In the case of migration, maybe also giving up some of your freedoms in return for not having to be exposed to foreigners whom you believe are taking your jobs away. For all political regimes the real question is, do they deliver two things, primarily: order and prosperity. And if one or the other doesn’t work well for the bulk of the population, then people look for alternative systems. Whether those alternative systems are necessarily good for them is a different question.
Do you think that there is a change in values and value systems between your generation and our generation?
I grew up at the time of the 60s upheaval and the détente of the 1970s. The 80s were a much more individualistic age. I grew up with more social democratic tendencies, and the 80s individualism has lasted until now. We’ve seen in the process the destruction of communities. And belatedly, everybody’s waking up to the fact that community is important. On the other hand, the community can also be very repressive. Again, it’s tradition versus modernity or traditional society versus modern society. Each of them has advantages and disadvantages which stem from the same institutional arrangements. The community is good because you feel solidarity, but the community can also be repressive and keep you from being the individual that you can become. The potential that you have cannot materialize because there are constraints. What you learn is that there are no easy, black-and-white answers to questions or to problems, but you use your intelligence alongside your experience to make the synthesis.
What do you think Türkiye’s main strengths are going into the 2030s?
There are obviously the perennial geographic advantages - the geopolitical value of Türkiye, and all that. The single most important asset that Türkiye has is its human capital. I’m afraid that in the last few years, we have lost sight of that fact.
What are some of the areas that Türkiye can improve?
We need to be analytical. In today’s world, if you don’t do analytical thinking, and if you cannot do mathematics, if you’re not good with numbers, you’re bound to fail.
What do you see as the role of mathematics, statistics, and models in the social sciences?
A recent contender for the leader of the Liberal Party in Canada is a former journalist, Chrystia Freeland, who has written a book called The Plutocrats. In the book, there is one quotation from a geek in Silicon Valley who says, “If you can’t read numbers, you’re doomed.” And that’s what I think about our relation to mathematics and statistics. If you cannot read the numbers, you’re doomed.
Then what would be your advice to aspiring social science or history students at Robert College?
It is truly very important to have a good theoretical framework in your own mind so you can process the data. If you cannot process the data, then the data remains information, not knowledge. You need to process information and data to turn it into knowledge, and that really requires a solid theoretical framework.
Why did you choose academia?
I really wanted to be an actor, and teaching in a classroom was the closest I could get – that’s where I breathe. I don’t consider myself an academic, but I do consider myself a teacher because that’s something that I value a lot, and it also shows you how important a movie or a book can be in your life. One movie that probably had such an impact on my life was To Sir, with Love with Sidney Poitier, a black professor, and a black high school teacher, teaching in a white and very rowdy high school. The idealism projected there truly seduced me. Whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know, but I’m happy with what I’m doing.
You regularly say that you think with triangles. What’s the background story of that?
That’s from a professor of International Relations of mine. He was incomprehensible, but I probably got more from him than anyone else. He believed that thinking in triangular terms simplified an analysis. That is, you have a major power, a contender, and a rising power in waiting. It does help you think things through, but then obviously you cannot stop with that simple geometric figure. You’ve got to then invest it with details.
Was your most recent triangle US, China and India?
The so-called global south. The two sides are well-known. We’ll see what the third side is going to be or whether it will be a pentagon or an octagon.
According to the power transition theory, after a certain point, when a country’s currency becomes a reserve currency, it all goes downhill. It starts to go downhill after it peaks.
The concept of the peak has also been used and abused. For instance, we were supposed to have had peak oil. We didn’t. We were supposed to have had peak China. We don’t. And we’re supposed to have had a peak dollar. Well, the dollar seems to disagree. But, yes, the current hierarchy probably is not tenable. But how long will it take for that hierarchy to change is your guess as good as mine.
Do you have anything else to add?
I thank the administration of Robert College for allowing me to be so happy through these lectures.
Published May 2025
