Elif Nuroğlu

This paper aims to see whether there is a commercial and financial rivalry between Turkey and Germany in the Balkans by examining the export volumes, exported items, and foreign direct investments of these two countries to five Balkan countries. Our findings show that the commercial competition between Turkey and Germany in the Balkans is not serious. However, as the export growth of Turkey in the region continues to increase as it has done in the last two decades, Turkey has the potential to be a serious competitor to Germany in electrical goods and appliances, motor vehicles parts and components, power generating machinery and vehicles, metal articles, specific and general industrial machines, and plastics.

Written as an outcome of two years of wandering around China’s border regions and far-away parts of Asia, China’s Asian Dream is an interesting book covering a very contemporary issue. Although it seems much more related to Asia and the Euro-Asian world, China’s rising economic power is indeed worrying many nations. The big ones are worried that they are going to lose their current economic and consequently political and military power, while the small countries need to think about the trade-off they face between the economic and commercial benefits that are presented by China in gold plates which cannot be resisted, and their autonomy, which China is possibly going to take over quiescently.

The book analyzes environmental issues under three main chapters. The first chapter discusses the issues of global climate, environment and energy with respect to global challenges and opportunities for stability. The articles in this chapter focus on security to which global climate change can be seen as a contemporary threat (article 1 by Katman herself). The second article discusses the paradigm shift in Millennium Development Goals, where the consideration of science as a basic principle is suggested as the most important component, and the responsibilities of the public and private sectors should be balanced. It is also important to note that acceptance and awareness of environmental problems in society are key factors, and that bottom-up, not top-down management style is important to achieve environmental goals. For sustainable development and environment protection, the participation of local actors are crucial to making legal regulations more useful and successful.