The Supply-Chain Moment By Mehmet Enes Beşer 2026 won’t be remembered for a single summit, a chairmanship slogan, or a carefully worded communiqué. It will be remembered for something colder and more structural: whether Southeast Asia adapted to a world that is no longer simply “globalized,” but reorganized—by tariffs, industrial policy, export controls, strategic rivalry, and a growing willingness by ...
Rising Aspirations, Enduring Barriers By Mehmet Enes Beşer With this era of climate consciousness and responsible consumption, sustainable fashion is a global movement transforming how individuals perceive apparel. In Southeast Asia, where garment manufacturing and textile production are the drivers of economic growth and international supply chains, green and socially conscious fashion is gradually building momentum. Customers, especially young people ...
Reimagining Development By Mehmet Enes Beşer Development assistance to Southeast Asia has long come from the Global North: bilateral donors, international financial institutions, and multilateral organizations molding the region’s infrastructure, health systems, and governance framework. Although such assistance at times has delivered spectacular success it has also imposed a price: agendas of donors, unpredictable commitments, and conditionality that restrict policy ...
Policy Pathways to Strengthen Value Chain Participation By Mehmet Enes Beşer Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of Southeast Asia’s economy. SMEs consist of over 97% of the total number of firms and add significantly to employment and GDP of ASEAN nations. But in spite of all their dynamism and compactness, ASEAN SMEs are still firmly under-connected into ...
If Cambodia is to chart its own independent path, then it will have to diversify its alliances, improve institutional governance, and balance the benefits of Chinese engagement with broader regional and global cooperation. By Mehmet Enes Beşer There is no other nation-state that comes close to equaling the breadth and depth of Chinese engagement in the Cambodian international relations world. ...
The crisis in Myanmar has become the test case for ASEAN. By Mehmet Enes Beşer Today, it is entering its fourth year with no endgame on the horizon. The military regime is as entrenched as ever, and anti-junta forces have become more united in their efforts, while humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate month after month. Within this maelstrom of uncertainty ...
Time for a Strategic Pivot By Mehmet Enes Beşer The atmosphere in the capitals of Southeast Asia is growing increasingly unmistakably fatigued when it comes to climate finance. All those repeated promises from the developed world to mobilize billions on the behalf of climate mitigation and adaptation in the Global South have come woefully short. From unpaid commitments under the ...
ASEAN environmental sustainability depends on how digital technologies become localized. By Mehmet Enes Beşer The environmental sustainability experience of Southeast Asia is an uneven and rugged terrain, shaped by forces that intersect but refuse to move together in harmony. As the ASEAN countries speed up to discover the middle path between economic development and nature protection, they must contend with ...
If ASEAN is to take the lead on climate, it must break a paradox not through compromise but through change. By Mehmet Enes Beşer There is a stunning paradox at the core of the Southeast Asian model of development, a paradox more desperate with each climate summit, energy crisis, and investment diversion. The ASEAN bloc has subscribed formally to world ...
Needed summit outcome so that the chair’s slogan—Inclusivity and Sustainability—will be more than a theme. By Mehmet Enes Beşer The year has conspired to make ASEAN’s end-October Leaders’ Summit in Kuala Lumpur unusually consequential. Malaysia, chairing under the banner of “Inclusivity and Sustainability,” must navigate a denser-than-usual thicket: renewed tariff salvos from Washington, the still-bleeding crisis in Myanmar, the slow-moving ...