I am always amazed by Turkey. The economic fundamentals of the country should be pretty strong. This is why I am puzzled by the economic turmoil it has been in for decades. Sure, there are some political decisions which are mind-boggling, like the interest rate policies of the Turkish Central Bank. But it should not be hard to get Turkey well on its feet. It is already a very attractive location to move production and other industries. It has competitive energy prices, a well-trained workforce and a young demography. The location is a strategic advantage, and so is the foreign relations, which are very much developed for the benefit of Turkey.
Terrorism by the PKK is still a problem, but thanks to the recent strikes against their infrastructure and manpower, capabilities have been diminished. Like other terrorist organisations, the PKK uses their people as human shields so that civil tragedies tragically happen and are exploited by some “human rights groups”, putting themselves into the service of terrorism. This is a strategy I have also seen in Palestinian protests in Israel, where children were positioned in the front. And to the extreme, it is used now by Hamas. Hezbollah seems to do this less. But I also have only met Hezbollah in North Lebanon, so I am not in a conflict zone.
In Turkey, it was great to see the celebrations and decorations on October 29th, celebrating 100 years of the foundation of the Republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Unfortunately, I was not in Ankara, but I would have loved to see that.
Back in Germany for an administrative stopover, how fast this country goes down is frightening. Especially in larger cities, it became Zombieland. Voting the current German government into power was the “German Brexit”. Like the UK, Germany became a complete laughing stock. Society is split between socialist Lala-Land and a rising right wing, with little in between. For most Germans, I know, it’s time to leave. Today, the police found an M52 hand grenade in a public central place in Frankfurt / Main. That’s still Yougoslave-made, cheap and flooding the black market since the end of the Balkan wars in the 1990s. I can imagine what kind of arsenal we will get into criminal hands when the Ukrainian arms reach Western Europe the Ukrainian mafia. I guess the Germans will get back their guns soon. It is unclear to me how the Ukraine airspace will ever be safe for civil aviation again. The odds that somebody keeps a shoulder-fired ground-to-air missile for decades to shoot down a plane are pretty high, I guess.