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Turkey’s response to Covid-19 - an example to learn from

Global Report, 27 Nov 2020
Vincent Swift, senior advisor for the Reinvent Economy Task Force explains the details:


Faced with the proliferating pandemic, every country came up with their own package of defensive measures to contain Covid-19. But few were as comprehensive and swiftly implemented as Turkey’s led by its President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.


The outcome – so far – of this exemplary response is that Turkey’s death rate/million population is running at 20% of that in Western Europe. However, Turkey’s impressive actions against the coronavirus have not spared it from the economic meltdown that has afflicted all countries. Even those that are somewhat “removed from the action”, like New Zealand for instance, are not decoupled from global supply chains, and are also in deep recession.

The bigger challenge now for governments is dealing with Covid-19’s disastrous fallout of locked-down populations, paralysed industries and stalled economies. Broken economies have their own dire consequences: much higher non-Covid death tolls, and far lower quality of life for whole populations for years to come.

Another inevitable outcome is increasing social unrest, with popular blame falling – naturally - on governments. Frustrated citizens have no one but their government to blame for the desperate situation. In countries severely damaged by the coronavirus domino effect, the political party currently in power will at best lose the next election, or fall even before that in a civil uprising.

Governments are in an impossible dilemma: insufficient money to function due to the decline in tax revenues; and no way to raise taxes from a population that cannot tolerate another burden on top of the economic disaster they are currently suffering.

The immediate priority then, is for governments to reboot their economies, but by implementing solutions that have been developed for the post-pandemic world. These totally new challenges cannot be resolved with the same old way of thinking. New problems need new solutions.

In order to confront the unprecedented economic recession and to alleviate social unrest, it is necessary to leverage the crisis into an opportunity. An opportunity to reinvent the economy, by providing people with immediate solutions to get alternative or even better jobs, and to fuel governments with new tax-money without adding any pressure on local tax payers or downgrading public services.

That’s where ReInvent Economy comes in. It is an international Post-Covid Economy Recovery Task Force which has developed the ideas, business models, and the technology to implement immediate strategic solutions at national level, and has formed the global alliances to make recovery happen in participating countries worldwide.

ReInvent Economy offers a range of powerful business concepts, with the technology ready and easy to customize for each government to fit their existing systems and regulations. These are new-age business models and will sustain long after countries have recovered from the coronavirus-driven recessions.

What is needed next is for governments to display the same kind of swift decision-making over the recession virus that Turkey did over the less lethal coronavirus.
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