HEADLINES | TASAM Turkish Asian Center for Strategic Studies

In the New World Order of the 21st century, the information age has revolutionized our lives, shrunk distances, and made societies more interdependent. Cyberspace and its underlying systems emerged as domains of profound influence on defense doctrines with the advent of communications technology, proliferation

“We are all the losers if we move into a new Cold War, new arms race. So, we must try our utmost to find that balance between being firm, predictable, delivering credible attempts of defence, but at the same time trying to develop a better relationship with Russia including arms control and political dialogue with Russia.“

20th century has witnessed two terrible and startling World Wars, one Cold War and many regional conflicts; however, humanity has never experienced any age of insecurity after the end of Cold War. Since there were many rouge and failed states around at the period, democratization in line with modernization were inseperable brother-in-arms in order to balance the world in security terms.

Transforming the relations between Turkey and Middle East (or in a narrower context between Turkey and the Gulf States - where strategic dialogue is still developing despite its strong historical and cultural background) from a fragile axis to a cooperation axis that will adapt to new balances, new roles and new alliances is an obligation rather than an option. Seen with vision and foresight, it has been tested in various crises, where history and the spirit of the time have long reminded this.

The geopolitical panorama created by the similarities of African countries as well as their differences provides crucial data both for their integration and for their potential for conflict. Both intra-continental and international defence and security strategies need to be determined in a way that does not exploit these qualities of Africa and that primarily treats them as gains in favor of the continent.

The international institutions and the understanding of security created after World War II for global balance and control become unable to respond to the security needs of our age. The deepening of the last wave of globalization that started in the 1980s brought with it unprecedented alignments and separations at the global level.

BRAINS2 TÜRKİYE is a brand/initiative with multi-programs based in Turkey which develops market, ecosystem and capacity in the ‘Biotechnology’, ‘Robotics’, ‘Artificial Intelligence’, ‘Nanotechnology’, ‘Space’ and ‘Strategic Services’ fields. The programs planned through identical visions and strategies for each main fields which transforms the new business models and multidimensional power distribution in the global economy, are implemented under the common title of BRAINS2 TÜRKİYE.

After the Industrial Revolution, with the development of production, trade, logistics and markets, it is seen that Britain in the 19th century and the United States later in the 20th century owed their control over world trade to navy.

The rapid development of information technologies has brought security problems of the same magnitude. In the early years of the Internet, "accessibility" came to the fore among the three important components of information security, "accessibility, confidentiality, and integrity"; First, the development and operation of the Internet were considered, and "confidentiality and integrity" remained in the background.

First of all, I sincerely welcome all our participants. I wish that the 6th Istanbul Security Conference and its sub-events, which we had to do online in 5 separate halls due to the pandemic this year, will produce strategic and historical results for our countries and the world.