The two main problems of economics are fair resource and wealth distribution. The state is the institution that undertakes the responsibility of the fulfillment of these functions, which are also linked to other public goods and services.
It can be said that a independent state is the entirity of legal institutions that ensure the sovereignty of people who live and are politically organized on a determined geographical area. Governments consisting of people elected to govern the state; they are responsible for performing public duties that are fundamental to citizens' right to life, such as defense and security. The duties and obligations of the state are not limited to this, but also include providing services that are of fundamental importance for the welfare of societies and which markets, that is, the private sector, are insufficient to provide alone.
In addition to the most basic needs such as nutrition and shelter, "self-actualization" is also of fundamental importance for the well-being of societies and individuals, which means first being healthy and accessing information to improve and develop those conditions and environment instead of just taking them as given. To be more concrete, it includes reaching the potential to contribute to literature, philosophy and science. Therefore, access to health and good education are public services that the State must provide as a fundamental right of every citizen.
Providing all these services requires resources for the State. Although this resource is for the well-being of that country's citizens, it is constrained by a challenge we call "the tragedy of the commons." Because the services that everyone will benefit from at the same rate are thought to be covered by others anyway, no one may choose to contribute and therefore may not be provided adequately due to their deprivation. For this reason, the State collects compulsory taxes, imposes prohibitions and penalties for the production of public goods and services necessary for social welfare.
In a developing and non-rich society, if these services are not provided to every citizen as a standard and free of charge or formally/widely at a price accessible to every citizen, this will increase inequalities, restrict equal access to opportunities in the future, and as a result, create class divisions in society. It is expected that the transfer of public services such as education and health to the profit-oriented private sector will also lead to this situation.
Education and health services in Turkey were privatized starting in the 1990s that gained even greater momentum in the 2000s. As a result, unfortunately, the share of the State's pre-university education expenditures in total income in Turkey is below the average and is at the bottom of the ranking of the OECD countries. In contrast, private spending on education is twice that of the OECD average!
This situation, which clearly shows that the public sector does not fulfill its primary duties properly, creates inequality of opportunity and social segregation in Turkey that will be reflected on future generations. Moreover, in addition to the transfer of these areas left vacant by the State to sects and cemaats; schools that have been transformed into training imam-hatips far beyond the needs, and the dequalified curriculum, from which national history, philosophy, science and mathematics are excluded, are literally building a conscious wall in front of the welfare and development of the country.
Another of the state's most important public services is the protection of public assets. Beneath and the surface of the soil are the public assets of the nation. Our mines and ports are public property. Selling them to global companies or transferring their profits means precisely exposing the country to the “tragedy of the commons”. These are not global common goods, but assets of the homeland. What happened in İliç, the abdication of state officials from responsibility for the lives lost in privatized mines, train services started without signalization, and as if this was not enough, the fact that they were rewarded, pushes us to question the definition of the State that does not fulfill its primary duties.
Within the current political order, the State administration seems to have turned into a corporatocracy attached to global monopolies, and institutions have been stripped of their primary functions and turned into units that serve this order. Our public assets, which seem to have been transformed into global common goods, also point to the continuation of colonization, which was thought to have ended after World War II, or the phenomenon called the "natural resource curse". The Republic of Türkiye is literally being made to relive the period of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. However, this time the only way out is open to us and that is to return to our founding principles.