Turkey has undergone significant transformations since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, as illustrated by the notable growth of its airline industry. Turkish Airlines (THY) is the main company based in the country, and has dramatically extended its network of destinations in the past 15 years. 

It is not easy to step back and gain perspective on a battle that is raging on the home front for all of us and has not yet reached its peak. However, I do want to share some of my thoughts on the COVID-19 pandemic, especially its context.

The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare a series of troublesome truths, both about healthcare infrastructures in Western nations and the state of their democracies.

The quarantine they prescribed, albeit after periods of irresoluteness, drew embarrassing parallels to measures taken by China just a few weeks earlier. Social life has come to a near standstill without citizens being given a chance to deliberate, as procedures were discussed for the most part in closed-door meetings between the executive branch and appointed experts: the White House Coronavirus Task Force in the United States, the Scientific Council of France, etc. The general public has been hardly more involved in the West than in China.

In contrast, South Korea has thus far been the only significantly affected country to contain the spread of Covid-19 without shutting itself down or compromising even temporarily democratic institutions.

Northeast Asia has emerged as a critical theater of Russian foreign policy in recent years.

Moscow’s historical Westerncentrism is giving way to a new awareness about the vital importance of the region. The “turn to the East” now has genuine substance and impetus. Yet Russian policy is a work in progress, more opportunistic than strategic. The security landscape is complex and fluid, and Moscow has struggled to manage its contradictions.

Waste-to-energy plants appear as an effective means of dealing with two problems of electricity access and waste management at once.

If Iran is a key player in the Middle East, it is in no small part because of its extensive network of armed militia, which it uses as proxies.

South Korea is a hydrogen (H₂) frontrunner. The world’s first commercial fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) was launched by the South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai (Tucson i×35) in 2013.

POSCO Energy, South Korea’s largest private energy producer, completed the world’s largest fuel cell manufacturing plant in 2015. When President Moon took office in 2018, the new government identified H₂ as a new growth engine, and pledged to turn the country into a H₂ economy.

Middle Eastern geopolitics is currently undergoing structural changes: the regional order is in transition in the aftermath of the Arab Spring that undermined authoritarian governance, and triggered the competition for power against a backdrop of American withdrawal.