There are commercial satellite manufacturers and there are countries that build their own satellites. In the first group, the No. 1 is the Airbus Defense and Space Co., which makes $12 billion a year in that business. Boeing is in second place with $7 billion and Elon Musk’s SpaceX with $5 billion (compared to Tesla’s $80 billion, it is peanuts, but it is better than nothing).
In the second category, there are satellite old-timers who manufacture and launch them into orbits around the Earth; and satellite startups who yet manufacture their own satellites. Türkiye is in the last group of startups. By July, we will have our own satellite, Türksat 6A, a proud handicraft of our own scientists and technicians, as an addition to the 10 civilian and military-purpose satellites in orbit. It will be launched by the SpaceX. Ensar Gül, general manager of Türksat, a member of the consortium that built Türksat 6A, says that soon Türkiye will be using its own rocket to send its own satellites to space.
From the preceding two paragraphs, you may, rightly, judge that the writer of them is very proud of this satellite, its builders and those politicians and bureaucrats that made it possible. Yes, I am.
There are thousands of satellites in the sky above us at this moment, orbiting Earth. Governments, militaries and even civilians use them to get internet access, television signals, GPS, do scientific observations and provide means for technology development. More than half of the existing satellites are used for communications purposes, and their number is rising as companies race to bring high-speed internet access to every corner of Earth.
By March 2024, the satellite tracking website “Orbiting Now” lists 9,993 active satellites in various Earth orbits. (Numbers of known satellites by 10 top countries: the United States 2,804, China 467, the United Kingdom 349, Russia 168, Japan 93, India 61, Canada 57, Germany 47, Luxemburg 40, and Argentina 34. Of these countries U.S., Canada, China, Germany, Argentina, and Russia can build and launch satellites.)
Türkiye is the 25th in the list of satellite operators; currently, it can manufacture its own satellites but cannot launch them yet. So far, Türkiye has 10 functional and three out-of-service satellites; but it obviously needs more than this.
If you leave out the fantastical predictions like forming an alliance with Japan to attack the U.S. and clashing with Poland, almost all geopolitical analysts expect that Türkiye will be one of the countries with a very large sphere of influence, ranging from Peloponnesos (which, by then, no more in the Greek Union) to entire Balkans, from the Caucasus to Central Asia (which, by then, no more part of the Russian Federation). To influence such a large area, obviously, you have to have very extensive communication and reconnaissance satellite web. I hope and pray that our Greek neighbors will be enjoying peace and prosperity forever and the Russians will have their back (and front) yards in order when Türkiye will be exerting its stabilizing effect on friends and foes. However, it is clear that stabilization requires constant observation and systematic review of neighbors. I think that is what Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the modern republic, meant when he said we need “Peace at home and peace in the world.”
“Si vis Pacem, para bellum,” as they say, "If you want peace, prepare for war." What is a better way than to be prepared for anything in this day and age rather than to be in space? That is, “Peace through strength” as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan used to say. There is another saying in Turkish about the small pebbles causing unexpected head wounds, denoting “a little stone may upset a large cart” and nothing is so certain as the unexpected! There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip!
Enough with proverbs! Almost all the famous geopolitical analysts note an unexpected and a much predictable development that is going to impact the international balance of power: the population crisis and space solar systems.
They say the people in the U.S. and Europe (Russia included) forgot how to make babies. Well! Joking aside! Perhaps anybody would learn or re-learn the know-how part of it in this Wikipedia era (btw, Google now does the googling for you!). But the part they seem to forget is actually to have them and keep the population level intact. But, fortunately from the consumption point and unfortunately from the production point, the population levels of the major countries are declining. Population decline is a reduction of population size, and, contrary to population growth, it is not particularly avoidable. Pew Research Center predicts that population growth is expected to stop by 2100. However, until then, it will peak at 10.4 billion from the existing level of 8 billion; in the 22nd century, it will go steadily down. But now, despite the considerable declines in fertility rates in huge nations such as China, India and Bangladesh, we are adding an extra billion every year, globally.
Japan, Romania, Belarus, Croatia, Moldova, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine and Bulgaria are already experiencing negative population growth, that is, their populations are declining. Whereas, the United States, the Russian Federation, China and the Western European countries are going to have a demographic decline in the next decade. Like Japan and former Soviet bloc countries, they will be consuming less and producing less. For now, their people are getting old and retiring (that means they are not saving any money nor buying bonds and shares) but, thanks to modern medicine and their increasing health care, those old-timers are going to live longer and keep getting their pensions longer than their parents. If these countries would like to keep their social security systems in the black, they should keep their investment, exports-imports and tax revenues at their 21st-century levels. In short, they have to allow immigration.
How can you do it if you keep electing Donald Trump as your president? This is also a valid question for China and the Western European countries, even though Trump is not on their ballots, their conservatives, progressives and populists are all averse to immigrants. France and Germany are already paying Greece to capsize refugee boats in the Mediterranean; so they will never have an open-door policy for immigration. They would just as soon find other ways to reduce the number of their pensioners. Russia is an immigrant-accepting country, but they too have certain limits of tolerance regarding the immigrants’ religion and ethnicity. In short, in two or three decades, the social scene in Europe, Russia, China and then the U.S. will be not fun to watch.
When you mention Russia and America, you are also mentioning hegemonies; and since you have the U.S. as one of your subjects, you have to consider its new idea that global hegemony starts in outer space. The U.S. is privatizing outer space on the one hand; while the other is weaponizing the low and high orbits.
The U.S. Department of State (DOS) recently released a "Strategic Framework for Space Diplomacy," declaring that they will build a “rules-based international order for outer space.” The U.S. politicians celebrate the document as a groundbreaking effort to strengthen U.S. leadership in space. However, the international cooperation the U.S. declared is actually resisting the cooperation with strategic competitors in space projects. The United States seeks international cooperation to be under its space hegemony. There is Chinese and American scientific literature on how the United States seeks its hegemony in the solar system.
The United States has been progressively privatizing space explorations since the end of the Cold War. The aim of it is to maintain American hegemonic leadership on Earth and in the solar system. Since the beginning of the U.S. space explorations, its goal has been to achieve and maintain the dominant position in outer space. Our well-known geopolitical analysts remind us that after calling for international agreements to ban certain weapons in outer space, the United States changed tack and declared a unilateral moratorium that it would stop testing destructive direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles.
One can safely argue that the United States would not voluntarily commit to stop destructive missile tests if it had not already created its space security. Since the U.S. announcement a year ago, 34 additional countries have joined in this voluntary commitment, and it has gained widespread international support. Some analysts even argue that the U.S. has created the basis of those military satellite networks that George Friedman names Battle Stars.
The U.S., India, China and Russia are the only states to have destructive anti-satellite missile capability; and neither India, China, nor Russia support the U.S. unilateral moratorium and its initiatives at the United Nations.
If you are going to keep your global hegemony and continue reaping its benefits even when your population statistics indicate otherwise, then you need your satellites and Battle Star Galactica in outer space and on the dark side of the moon.
Now back to Earth! Türkiye is one of the rare countries with excellent population statistics. It has 85.3 million people with a growth rate of 0.11%. Its age pyramid and sex ratio promise no population decline in the foreseeable future. People’s life expectancy is increasing (78.6 years in 2020); urbanization is on the right point: three people out of four are living in urban areas. Literacy is perfect (96%) and the people have been accepting immigration. Even though, the sudden influx of those fleeing the Syrian civil war seems to have created some discomfort among the people.
In summary, we can confidently conclude that the current push for sky and beyond with satellites and rockets has the right amount of national will and political stock behind them. So, I am right about being proud of the forthcoming launch of Türkiye’s 10th satellite. Aren’t I?
