Hazar Raporu - Issue 02 - Winter 2012

In a similar fashion, it was the vision
of Lee Kuan Yew, one of the longestserving
prime ministers of the twentieth
century, that transformed the tiny
city-state of Singapore from a relatively
underdeveloped former colonial
settlement to a modern and competitive
economy and the major distribution hub
in Southeast Asia. As early as 1973, just
eight years after independence, Singapore
was being hailed as “the world’s fourth
busiest port,” serving more than 200
shipping carriers and some fifty maritime
states. 2 By becoming the region’s oil
refining and distribution center, Singapore
managed to turn itself into an ‘oil-rich’ state
even though it was virtually devoid of any
oil of its own. Capitalizing on its strategic
location at the crossroads of the major
maritime routes between Europe and Asia,
Lee Kuan Yew seized every opportunity
that came his way. He established an
attractive business environment for foreign
direct investment (FDI) and pursued an
aggressive diversification policy. Today,
the country enjoys a strong economy with
a high level of FDI, and booming trade,
manufacturing, and finance sectors. In
2009, Singapore’s gross domestic product
(GDP) per capita exceeded $36,000, up
from a mere $395 in 1960. 3
Even though both Dubai and Singapore
have undoubtedly benefited from their
coastal locations and the entrepôt trade
generated by maritime traffic, the vision
2 T. J. S. George, Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore (London: Andre
Deutsch, 1973), p. 95.
3 World Bank, World Development Indicators. Retrieved
from http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.
of their respective leaders was essential to
these cities’ resounding economic success,
for without it they would be utterly
different places today. The paths taken
by Sheikh Rashid in Dubai and Prime
Minister Lee in Singapore offer a lesson
for every national leader and every country
aspiring to make an enduring mark in the
world: it is necessary to possess a vision for
the future.
Unlike the world’s great seaports, the
prominent commercial cities of the
Caspian Basin region have historically
been land-based hubs. It took months and
even years for the ancient Silk Road traders
to travel between Europe and Asia, and
the Caspian region’s hub cities served as
critical regional logistics and distribution
centers. Each of them had a number of
caravanserais, where goods and ideas
exchanged hands, and people and cultures
met and mixed. These trading centers
were connected with other regional hubs
and megacities through a vast network of
corridors across Eurasia and the Middle
East. The Silk Road corridors were for
centuries the source of prosperity for many
nations in Central Eurasia. 4
Central Eurasia is once again poised to
regain its former prominence as a landbased
hub between Europe and Asia. By
2030, a tourist will be able to jump on a
high-speed train in Istanbul and arrive in
Baku the same day; he will even have time
4 Although the term “Central Eurasia” has a number of different
definitions, in this report it refers to eight Caspian region
countries, namely the three South Caucasus states of Armenia,
Azerbaijan, and Georgia and the five Central Asian states of Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
CASPIAN REPORT
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