Frankly, about 10 years ago, I thought we were living in one of the most ordinary period in the history of the world. Yes, a lot had happened until that day, but at that time we were living a routine life in a routine world… But it was never ordinary… As people in the world, we continued to experience many things.
While preparing a leading article for this first issue of 2023, I wanted to go back and look at what we went through. Actually, my aim was just to use the past to create a preview for the future, but I lost control and got lost myself in the events of the past. As a result, I found myself compiling to share some different events with you which marked the world’s agenda in the last 10 years… For example;
• The economic crisis and protests in Greece
• Syrian civil war and refugee crisis
• Macron era in France
• The Panama Papers leakage
• Donald Trump’s election as US President
• Terrorist attacks in Europe and escalation of racism
• Mosque attack in New Zealand
• Amazon fires in Brazil
• The young Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg bocoming the symbol of the climate movement
• Coup attempt against Maduro in Venezuela
• Historical summit between North and South Korea
• Yellow vest protests in France
• The death of the world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking
• Assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi
• Assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia
• Brexit negotiation process and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU
• Paris Climate Agreement
• #Metoo, the women’s movement
• Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation
• Catalonia’s independence movement from Spain
• Iran Nuclear Deal
• Russian invasion of Ukraine
• The Queen II. Elizabeth’s death
• Mahsa Emini protests in Iran
• Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk
• World population exceeding 8 billion
• Biden’s victory in the US presidential elections and the Capitol attack by a crowd of Trump supporters
• Coup in Myanmar
• Egyptian military coup
• Covid-19 pandemic
• Blockage of the Suez Canal
• Flying a helicopter on Mars
• El Salvador becoming the first country to use Bitcoin as legal tender
• Taliban takeover in Afghanistan
• Promising to stop using coal and forest loss at COP26
• End of Merkel era in Germany
• Assassination of Qassem Soleimani and shot down passenger plane in Iran
• Extinguished Bushfires in Australia after 240 days
• Explosion in Lebanon’s capital Beirut
• Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia
• …. and of course much, so much more…
While reading all this, have you thought that bad events are more on the agenda than good ones? Do you remember that some of them have a serious impact on our industry as well? No event should be trivialized because it takes place in another part of the world or in another area… The butterfly effect also includes spreading to the world or to different areas.
I wish 2023 and beyond will be remembered with good events and successes and only their positive effects will spread to our world and our industry.
See you in the next issue.
