By Mehmet Enes Beşer The ASEAN region boasts some of the finest solar irradiation in the world, offering a geographical advantage in tapping solar power to meet its rapidly growing energy needs. With Southeast Asian economies industrializing, urbanizing, and modernizing, solar power has emerged as the cornerstone of the region’s renewable energy policy. The majority of such countries, led by ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Southeast Asia stands at a crossroads in the evolution of its healthcare. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital health technologies—everything from telemedicine and AI-driven diagnostics to wearable health devices and electronic health records. Yet despite the push, the region threatens to experience uneven growth in driving digital health to a dynamic, inclusive, and scalable ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Well before the recent memory global rice price spike, food insecurity had already become more entrenched in its grip on Southeast Asia. Already in the region were millions of individuals experiencing limited access to healthy, affordable food based on a mix of structural risk factors, socio-economic disparities, and more severe weather patterns. Climate change today is ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Throughout the years of heightened strategic rivalry between China and the United States, Southeast Asia is normally portrayed as a geopolitics arena—a theater wherein the two great powers struggle over influence, domination, and strategic depth. That dyadic picture, however, marginalizes the sophistication of Southeast Asian statecraft. Rather than being content to remain mere pawns in a ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most strategic sea highways where global commerce passes through, strategic rivalries, and environmental risk points meet. From Malacca Strait to South China Sea, Southeast Asian seas are as vital to global economic being as they are to Southeast Asian seas’ diversity for sovereignty and national interests. Ocean Space is ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer As the world hurtles towards a green energy, electric mobility, and high-technology future, rare earth elements (REEs) have emerged as the unsung cornerstone of the global green economy. These metals—vital to wind turbines, EV motors, semiconductors, and military uses—have emerged as a valuable asset on which economic and geopolitical competition is increasingly being fought. For Southeast ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Southeast Asia has always been a rich weave of cultures, languages, and identities. Diverse as that has been, it has also required a unifying linguistic strand that enables trade, diplomacy, and frequent intercourse across borders. European languages such as English, Dutch, and French served the purpose in colonial times. In the postcolonial period, English continued to ...
Experts interpret recent events unfolding in Myanmar as the US’ military, political and economical loss of power and the rise of China in the Asia Pacific. Myanmar is an energy-rich country in Southeast Asia, calling attention especially with its oil and gas reserves. Additionally, Myanmar is neighbor to India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand, thus located geostrategically important for energy ...