In the capital Ankara, Pesident Recep Tayyip Erdogan laid a wreath at the mausoleum dedicated to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the country’s founder, who created a modern, secular republic from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.
The centennial is also a personal milestone for Erdogan, who has been in power for more than 20 years. But challenges loom large as Turkey looks to the future. More from our correspondent Julia Hahn in Istanbul.
What might change the world’s dire demographic trajectory?
In the roughly 250 years since the Industrial Revolution the world’s population, like its wealth, has exploded. Before the end of this century, however, the number of people on the planet could shrink for the first time since the Black Death. The root cause is not a surge in deaths, but a slump in births. Across much of the world the fertility rate, the average number of births per woman, is collapsing. Although the trend may be familiar, its extent and its consequences are not. Even as artificial intelligence (ai) leads to surging optimism in some quarters, the baby bust hangs over the future of the world economy.
There is a chance for a partial reset
It certainly wasn’t fair. Nor was it entirely free. But, like it or not, the victory on May 28th of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey’s presidential election is a fact. For the next five years Turkey, Europe and the wider world will have to deal with a prickly and authoritarian populist. That is bad news on many fronts: economically, democratically and regionally. And yet pragmatists have a duty to search for chinks of light in the gloom.
That compounds the problems of shrinking workforces and rising bills for health care and pensions
“Adam is a special child,” says the voice-over, as the camera pans across abandoned classrooms and deserted maternity wards. “He’s the last child born in Italy.” The short film made for Plasmon, an Italian brand of baby food owned by Kraft-Heinz, a giant American firm, is set in 2050. It imagines an Italy where babies are a thing of the past. It is exaggerating for effect, of course, but not by as much as you might imagine. The number of births in Italy peaked at 1m in 1964; by 2050, the un projects, it will have shrunk by almost two-thirds, to 346,000.
The Guardian Weekly (May 19, 2023) – This week’s issue considered the end of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s long political career. But it soon became clear that predictions of the Turkish president’s demise had been greatly misjudged. A first-round victory over his secular opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, did not come by a wide enough margin to prevent a runoff vote on 28 May. But, barring a remarkable swing back to Kılıçdaroğlu, the indications are that Erdoğan will further extend his 20-year authoritarian brand of rule over Turkey.
As Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, toured European capitals to drum up support this week, speculation continued over when and where Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces would begin – or if indeed it had already done so. From Kherson, Luke Harding hears from a frontline commander why Kyiv is happy to bide its time, while defence editor Dan Sabbagh outlines four possible scenarios in which a Ukrainian counterattack might develop.
Two environmentally slanted features bring fascinating insights into very different parts of the world. From Kenya there’s the uplifting story of the waste picker who is lobbying for his colleagues’ working rights to be enshrined in a UN treaty. Then, John Bartlett reports from Antarctica on how the climate crisis, geopolitical tensions and booming tourism are straining relations at a remote scientific research station.
The Globalist, April 14, 2023: Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, visits China amid tensions over Taiwan. Meanwhile, South Korea announces that it will test North Korean defectors for radiation exposure and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, heads to Vietnam. Plus: we’re joined by Sony’s Photographer of the Year.
The Globalist, April 13, 2023: The US intelligence leak continues to cause a stir as documents suggest that Serbia might have provided lethal aid to Ukraine.
Plus: Myanmar’s junta accepts responsibility for a deadly airstrike, Erdogan launches his re-election campaign and a famous statue from the British Museum returns to Tahiti.
A Florida judge has given the Justice Department a week to decide what to make public regarding the search of former President Trump’s home.
The UN secretary general met with the presidents’ of Ukraine and Turkey in Lviv, Ukraine. A wave of violence in Mexico kept Tijuana residents at home after a cartel allegedly called for a curfew.
What are Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s foreign-policy aims? Plus: Russian troops try to encircle Ukrainian special forces in the Donbas region, a dispatch from our team at the World Economic Forum, and the latest business news.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week why the COP26 climate summit will be both disappointing—and crucial; the autumn of a patriarch in Turkey (11:23); and our Banyan columnist on the BJP’s battle with Bollywood (18:47).
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