There's been a lot of talk of Pittsburgh's "new economy" as a key reason for the city's star turn as host of this week's G-20 summit, but little has been said about the region's "next economy" -- what comes after the current slump.

It's beginning to be created under our noses.

Though seemingly abstract, the G-20's big-picture decisions -- on dialing down the extraordinary fiscal and monetary steps taken in the past year, building a new regulatory architecture for global finance, and starting the process towards a more balanced global economy and sustainable future -- have big implications for metropolitan areas.

Pittsburgh's stake in the G-20 deliberations goes beyond filling up local hotels and restaurants or hiring additional police -- and even beyond showcasing the region's resilience to the recession.

The fact is that Pittsburgh already is a global metropolis, with deep and growing ties to many of the G-20 countries because of its position as a supplier to the global steel industry (and still a maker of some types of steel), its burgeoning involvement in clean-energy sectors and its established position as a global center of education and health care.

Bayer, the German pharmaceutical conglomerate, has its U.S. headquarters in Pittsburgh, employing some 2,700 workers, including 1,200 at local medical-device manufacturer Medrad. Gamesa, the Spanish wind-energy giant, opened its first North American plant in Ebensburg, about 75 miles east of Pittsburgh. All told, more than 300 international firms from 26 different countries operate in the region, employing tens of thousands of people.

Pittsburgh's goods and services exports make up more than 14 percent of the region's gross metropolitan product, with the lion's share of goods headed to Canada, China, Japan and major economies in Europe -- all G-20 partners.

Given Pittsburgh's global status, the G-20 discussions have substantial implications for the future of the region's $100 billion economy.

The big question, at this summit and others in the future, is how to rebalance the global economy. The Great Recession followed a period of excessive consumption in the United States as Americans spent more on homes and consumer goods than they produced.

The fix is easy to state, but difficult to engineer. As Larry Summers, the head of the White House National Economic Council, said recently, "The rebuilt American economy must be more export-oriented and less consumption-oriented."

This rebalancing will require major and sustained action on currency values and trade policy in the United States as well as in large export economies like China, Germany and Japan (which will need to consume more). As this occurs, U.S. metro areas like Pittsburgh could benefit substantially given their unique assets and special niches.

While this won't quite be a 21st-century version of the equation "what Pittsburgh makes, the world takes," the combination of a more export-oriented trade policy and higher costs for carbon emissions (also to be discussed at the G-20 summit) present the region's economy with both opportunities and threats.

On the plus side, Pittsburgh could export more to the rest of the world and its steel-industry suppliers could benefit from increased exports by U.S. steelmakers. Higher prices for gasoline and jet fuel could mean that manufacturers and retailers in the United States would move away from far-flung networks of global suppliers and rely more on U.S. companies.

There is a potential downside for Pittsburgh, as well: for instance, as steelmakers in Germany and other countries export less and face higher costs of using U.S.-based suppliers, they might rely less on machinery and repair services from Pittsburgh.

To help ensure that the benefits of a rebalanced U.S. economy and a new climate regime outweigh the costs to the Pittsburgh area, local corporate, labor, political, university and civic leaders need a sharp regional business plan to guide the economic policies and innovation investments that they and the federal and state governments make in the Pittsburgh area.

Pittsburgh will have to continue to reclaim polluted industrial "brown fields" for post-industrial use -- an example for cities around the country and world.

Pittsburgh also will need to figure out how to draw more international traffic to its metropolitan airport, which currently offers only one direct flight to Europe.

The upshot: It is time for U.S. metropolitan regions to become more globally fluent and for national leaders to connect their big-picture policies to the fortunes of the urban areas that drive their economies. Only in this way can the United States, and Pittsburgh, move to the next stage of their economic evolution.

As expected, on August 10, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from the Justice and Development Party (AKP) decisively won Turkey’s first directly-elected presidential election. He received just about 52 percent of the votes, falling somewhat short of the 55 percent that the polls were predicting.

At a time when Turkey’s neighborhood is in a state of chaos and the country is deeply polarized, what will his next steps as president be? Will he transform Turkey’s political system from a parliamentary to a presidential one? Will he be able to simultaneously run his party, control the prime minister and be the president of Turkey? Will he be able to overcome the authoritarian and abrasive politics of the last two years and replace it with politics reminiscent of the mid-2000s characterized by consensus building and liberal reforms? Or will it be a case of more of the same?

Traditionally, presidents were elected by members of the Turkish Parliament, and had limited powers. However, Erdoğan has been aspiring for a strong presidency since AKP won close to half of the votes at the national elections in June 2011. While serving as prime minister, Erdoğan attempted to write a new constitution, but resistance from opposition parties together with the May 2013 Gezi Park protests and the December 2013 corruption scandal prevented him from achieving his goal. Consequently, his fallback plan has been to emerge triumphant from the 2014 presidential elections,use the presidential powers in the current constitution to its full extent and aim to get AKP to emerge from the parliamentary elections scheduled for June 2015 with enough seats, enabling him to see to the adoption of a new constitution. This new constitution would transform Turkey’s parliamentary system into a presidential one and give Erdoğan the possibility to run the country until 2023, the Republic’s centenary.

Erdoğan’s Opponents: İhsanoğlu and Demirtaş

Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu and Selahattin Demirtaş were Erdoğan’s main opponents. Although neither constituted major challenges for Erdoğan, each represent something significant for Turkey. The left-leaning secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) joined forces to support İhsanoğlu’s candidacy. İhsanoğlu, born and raised in Cairo, a prominent religious scholar, and a secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation from 2004 to 2010, was seen as the best candidate to attract former AKP members, and votes from the wider conservative electorate. Though he lacked political experience and visibility in Turkey, he managed to receive more than 38 percent of the votes. This performance falls short of the 44 percent that CHP and MHP garnered at the local elections in March this year, but would still be considered as a respectable performance.

Demirtaş, a prominent figure amongst Turkey’s Kurdish minority population and a keen partner in government efforts to find a political solution to the Kurdish problem in Turkey, ran for presidency on a secular and somewhat leftist agenda, sensitive to the interests of especially minorities and women. He received almost 10 percent of the votes, one point short of most poll predictions, but almost twice the amount that his party, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), received in March local elections. This suggests that Demirtaş received support not just from Kurdish, but also Turkish voters, a very significant development in terms of politics in Turkey.

How Has the Turkish Political System Worked in the Past?

With Erdoğan’s victory, Turkey is now at an important crossroad. Since World War II, Turkey has been a parliamentary system. The prime minister was the head of the executive branch of government and the president, elected by the parliament, held a ceremonial role. This changed after General Kenan Evren led the 1980 military coup d’état. In 1982, Evren introduced a new constitution that empowered the president with some executive powers intended to exert some control over civilian politicians. However, with the exception of Evren and his successor, Turgut Özal, subsequent presidents, Süleyman Demirel and Ahmet Necdet Sezer, refrained from using these constitutional powers in any conspicuous manner. So where did the notion of a directly-elected president come from?

The idea of a president elected directly by the electorate, rather than by the parliament, is an outcome of the military’s interference in politics in 2007. As the end of the staunchly secular and politically shy Sezer’s term approached, the military in a rather undemocratic manner, tried to prevent the then-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Gül, from becoming president. The military and the judicial establishment deeply distrusted Gül’s, as well as the AKP’s, commitment to secularism. The government overcame the challenge by calling for an early snap election that AKP won handsomely, opening the way for Gül’s election as the new president. Furthermore, the electoral victory encouraged Erdoğan to hit back at the military by calling for a referendum on whether future presidents should be directly elected by the people or by the parliament. Erdoğan’s initiative received support from 58 percent of the electorate, thereby quite decisively demonstrating to his opponents the very extent of his popularity while allowing him to emphasize the “will of the people” as the basis of his understanding of democracy.

The Campaigns: Two Approaches to Turkey’s Future

The 2014 presidential campaign unfolded as a competition between two political approaches to the future of governance in Turkey. The first approach, represented by Erdoğan, calls for a narrow and majoritarian understanding of democracy based on the notion of the “will of the people” (milli irade) at the expense of constitutional checks and balances and separation of powers. In return for such an authoritarian form of governance, Erdoğan promises a prosperous Turkey that will grow to be the 10th largest economy by 2023 and become a major regional, if not global power. It is with this in mind that Erdoğan aspires for a powerful presidential system dominated by him alone. The second approach, especially pushed for by İhsanoğlu, advocates the maintenance of the existing parliamentary system and warns that a hybrid system where both the prime minister and the president is elected directly by the people, risks creating instability, tension and polarization within the country. He advocated for a president who would be above party politics and who would focus on protecting freedoms and the rule of law.

Does Erdoğan Have a Mandate?

What will Erdoğan do now? He is confident that he enjoys wide-spread popularity among the masses. However, it is difficult to conclude if the electorate went to the polls on Sunday with a referendum to change the political system in mind. If they did, then they did so with a rather slim margin. Nevertheless, it is likely that Erdoğan will interpret the results of the elections as an explicit approval of his political agenda, and will thus proceed to transform Turkey towards a presidential system. However, a number of challenges will be awaiting his project. The first and immediate challenge will emerge with respect to the next prime minister. As a prominent Turkish columnist put it, Erdoğan will want a prime minister who will always be “one step behind”. But will politics allow for this to occur? Can Erdoğan find a loyal and unquestioning prime minister? The current constitution requires the president to resign his/her political party affiliations. Once he takes up his position as president at the end of August, will he be able to continue to enjoy control over AKP from a distance? This is not a challenge to be taken lightly considering that there will be parliamentary elections in 2015 and the ranks of AKP will be quite restless both in terms of the selection of candidates, as well as the prospects of ensuring a victory at the polls. Lastly, with ISIS’s growing power, political instability in many neighboring countries, a troubled relationship with the European Union and the United States and continued bloodbath in Syria, keeping the Turkish economy on course may turn out to be Erdogan’s greatest challenge. The coming months are going to be critical in terms of whether Erdoğan will overcome these challenges and succeed in transforming Turkey’s political system. The outcome will illustrate if Erdoğan is actually bigger than Turkey or vice versa. However, whatever happens in the next few months, it will largely determine if in 2023, Turkey will celebrate its centenary as a liberal or illiberal democracy. In the meantime, the fact that Erdoğan plans to use a constitution that was drawn up under military tutelage to achieve his presidential ambitions is both ironic, but also not very promising in terms of Turkey’s democracy turning liberal.

Editor's Note: Ranu Nath, the Turkey Project intern in the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings, contributed to this piece.

In a new research paper—The case for universal voting: Why making voting a duty would enhance our elections and improve our government—Brookings scholars E.J. Dionne, Jr. and William Galston make the case for universal voting—an electoral system in which voting would be regarded as a required, civic duty. Why not treat showing up at the polls in the same way we treat, say, a jury summons? Dionne and Galston argue that universal voting’s benefits would include enhancing the legitimacy of our governing institutions, increasing turnout and the diversity of the American voter base, and easing the intense partisan polarization that weakens our governing capacity.

What do you think of Dionne and Galston’s proposal? Specifically, if voting and registration rules were made easier, should voting in national elections be universal and mandatory for all eligible citizens?

To voice your opinion, click the image below and vote. We will share the results on social media.

The issue of Armenia enters the Turkish foreign policy agenda almost exclusively in the context of Western attempts at legislating genocide resolutions. The result is often a reactive nationalist defense.

In less than two years, by 2015, Turkey will find itself in a similar dilemma. Once again, it will be external dynamics that will drive the domestic and foreign policy debate, and quite predictably Turkey will react with anger and resentment to Western attempts at commemorating the centennial of the Armenian genocide. In order to avoid such an ordeal, Ankara needs to think about Armenian-Turkish relations now, before Western pressure builds up. The fact that Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu visited Yerevan last week is a step in the right direction and needs to be congratulated. Instead of panicking shortly before 2015, the Turkish government needs to pursue a multidimensional strategy, starting now. The first dimension of the strategy should be the opening of the border and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

As it is well known, shortly after the signature of the two protocols aiming at achieving these two goals in 2009, Ankara decided to index the ratifications of the protocols to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Linking the normalization of relations to a “frozen conflict” had the impact of freezing the protocols as well. It also showed that Turkey had no empathy for the Armenian political leadership, which took a lot of heat from the diaspora for dropping genocide recognition as a precondition for the normalization of relations with Ankara.

In retrospect, the Turkish decision to establish a precondition for normalization with Armenia was shortsighted because it practically gave Azerbaijan de facto veto power over Turkish-Armenian normalization. Instead, what Turkey should have done was to establish diplomatic and economic relations with Armenia with the hope that such a policy of engagement would in time create positive momentum and leverage in favor of a resolution in Nagorno-Karabakh. It remains unclear whether a breakthrough in this frozen conflict can be achieved in the absence of Turkey gaining more leverage in relations with Armenia. It looks like sequencing is the main problem here. The Turkish side is reportedly ready to open the border, establish diplomatic relations and even provide financial support to Armenia in return for an Armenian withdrawal from two of the seven occupied regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. This proposal looks like the same one Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a few years ago to his Armenian counterpart at the time, Robert Kocharyan. Kocharyan had refused the Turkish demand on the grounds that there should be no linkage between Nagorno-Karabakh and normalization with Turkey. It is hard to see why today the Armenian reaction to a very similar Turkish proposal would be any different.

Therefore, this most recent Turkish attempt at rapprochement with Armenia is also likely to fail in the absence of a unilateral Turkish gesture such as the opening of the border without preconditions. On the other hand, since Turkey is always in some kind of election season, it is almost impossible to see the Justice and Development Party (AKP) invest serious political capital in rapprochement by taking such a courageous step. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that the Armenian media saw Davutoğlu's Yerevan visit as nothing more than a public relations campaign. If Turkey is really serious about normalizing relations with Armenia, it will have to take some risks in relations with Azerbaijan. The key will be to convince Baku that only the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations will create positive momentum in solving the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. Turkey needs to open the border first and expect its diplomatic and economic engagement policy with Armenia to pay off in the long run. The alternative is to continue with the current policy. The current Turkish policy has produced no change in Nagorno-Karabakh in the last 20 years. It is time to think more creatively.

Event Information

On August 7, the White House announced cancellation of the planned Moscow summit in early September between Presidents Obama and Putin, saying there were no prospects for significant progress on key issues at the meeting.  The White House also said cooperation with Russia remains a priority, and on August 9 Secretaries Kerry and Hagel met with their Russian counterparts, Ministers Lavrov and Shoigu.  While President Obama intends to travel to St Petersburg for the G20 summit on September 6 and 7, there has been no word on whether there will be a bilateral meeting with President Putin on the margins of the summit.  Clearly, U.S.-Russian relations have entered troubled times.

On August 28, the Center on the United States and Europe hosted a panel discussion to address these developments and future prospects for the bilateral relationship between Washington and Moscow.  Brookings Senior Fellows Clifford Gaddy, Steven Pifer and Angela Stent will take part.  Brookings Visiting Fellow Jeremy Shapiro moderated.   Following opening comments, the panelists took questions from the audience.

Watch full video from the event at C-SPAN.org »

Video

• What the U.S. Does in Syria Will Be Costly for Russia
• Russia Reluctant to Intervene in Syria
• Russia Fears Increased Instability in the Middle East

Audio

• The U.S.-Russia Relationship: What's Next?

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20130828_US_Russia_transcript