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The Monocle Daily
How Washington’s intervention in Venezuela increases risk for the wider Latam region
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- [00:00]
A
You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 8 January 2026 on Monocle Radio. South American leaders race to recalculate their geopolitical risks and recalibrate their ties with the US In a more unpredictable world, why are some European nations struggling with their resilience and preparedness? Then, as blast off on a new space race looms, we'll assess the different approaches being taken by the superpowers and what the rewards are this time. Plus, why do some fictional prot protagonists, who you'd likely abhor if you met in reality, earn audiences support on the big screen? I'm Vincent McEvin. The Monocle Daily starts now. Hello and welcome to the Monocle daily. I'm Vincent McEvin, coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. We, my guests, Tira Schubart and Antonio Sampao will discuss the day's big stories. Stay tuned. All that plus more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. Well, this is the Monocle Daily and I'm Vincent McEvinney. I'm joined today by Tyra Schubart, journalist and fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and by Antonio Sampao, expert on Latin American politics and and security. Welcome to you both. Tira, how has 2026 started for you so far?
- [01:36]
B
Oh, 2026 has started very nicely with a lot of interesting cultural activity and some swimming.
- [01:44]
A
Okay. I feel like we're past the bit of saying Happy New Year to people, but we're still sort of trying to do the New Year's resolutions thing. Are yours going well?
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B
Well, I tend not to make resolutions. I have a few goals that are usually connected with having some fun. And I'm going on holidays in more and different places.
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A
Well, that sounds like a great one. And Antonio, how about yourself?
- [02:08]
C
I like her approach. I started very relaxed and I'm sort of enjoying my end of year holidays, which are my favorite holidays, because everyone sort of disconnects and you don't have the pressure of looking at your phone. And then the whole thing with Venezuela happened, which is sort of my neck of the woods and the geopolitical politics were completely messed up. So I'm sure we will discuss that. So I'm sure there will be plenty of work this year.
- [02:33]
A
Well, yes, we're going to discuss that now. We are only eight days into 2026, but it feels already that a lot has happened. And whilst European attention has been focused on Greenland for the past 48 hours, countries in South America are Still reeling from the weekend's defenestration of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. President Trump's rebooting of the 19th century Monroe Doctrine as the Donro Doctrine is lighting up phone lines between capitals as leaders try to recalculate the continent's paradigm. Antonio, of particular interest to you is Brazil, one of the countries that Venezuela borders. What's the reaction been like from Brazilian people and from Lula's government?
- [03:15]
C
So I think the reaction across South America has been one of shock. And as everything political now in the region, everything's very divisive and polarized. The leader, especially of Brazil, Lula da Silva, was strongly against the measure, against the operation, and used some strong words on Twitter about violation of international law. But the population in South America has split across the right left divide, which has marked the region so strongly in recent years. And the right had Maduro and his regime as one of the favorite sort of foreign policy flags of the campaign, the messaging. So they were very happy with the overthrow and see the Trump measure as a sort of a role model, just like they see the anti gang, the sort of mass incarceration policies in El Salvador as something that leaders in the other countries of the region should emulate and the sort of might makes right as a strong sort of issue for them. But I think that the majority of the population, the sort of moderates as well as the left wing, have seen that as a very blatant violation of Latin American sort of regional sense of identity and obviously of national sovereignty.
- [04:36]
A
And just on the border itself, there was a lot of sort of criminality, a lot of sort of people trafficking, goods trafficking across that border. What are we seeing playing out at the moment there?
- [04:48]
C
So the Venezuelan border with Brazil has been a very long standing concern for the authorities, especially for the military, because the military not only has the responsibility over security of borders, but also over the riverine networks in the Amazon area, which of course are right there near the Venezuelan border. So it has been preparing in recent years, especially with the tensions recently with Colombia, before the Gustavo Petro presidency in Colombia, but also now with the US Tensions for an increase or a renewal of the sort of refugee cris overflow of migrants, but also the potential crossing, more crossing of drug trafficking groups. And I think that the operation and the increased maritime presence, military maritime presence of the US Navy makes it extremely likely. I think the data at this point is still quite early on for us to have any data, but I think it's quite likely that the drug flows, the sort of transnational Criminal economies flowing the coast of Venezuela, especially towards Europe and the US Are some of that will pass to Brazil to go from the Brazilian coast. But it's important to note that the Trump message, the sort of Republican MAGA messaging of the Venezuelan drugs harming the US has to be understood in light of the types of drugs that Venezuelan exports, which are mostly cocaine. It's not the fentanyl substances that are causing such Havoc in the U.S. cocaine, which has been a very popular drug in the west for decades and decades. So, you know, there are nuances there.
- [06:41]
A
A lot is going to play out. Tira Trump has been on the world stage for quite some time now. And as much as his actions are unpredictable, his behaviors can be anticipated at times. He says often what he will actually do in advance. What should leaders be doing right now based on what he's been saying?
- [07:00]
B
Well, just this afternoon, both the German president and then the French president, Mackenzie Macron, have in uncoordinated statements said he must the Americans with using very careful language to not destroy any ties that they've built up carefully, that the Americans must respect international law and they must be aware of it. But there always is a certain amount of misdirection sometimes. And although they say Trump does what he says, he also does a lot of misdirection. And all the talk about Greenland, which you mentioned, I mean, Greenland landing in a very icy and snowy place in the middle of a very icy and snowy winter, where would you land in any case? Is that a bit of misdirection to perhaps be able to look at Cuba, which is much easier, no snow and ice down there. And it's 90 miles from the American coast. And it ticks off a number of the business and business, business desires for the American, for American investors. And also it makes the people in Florida that were, that are Cuban descent very happy.
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A
Speaking of one of those Americans from Florida of Cuban descent, Marco Rubio, I mean, this is something that he has long dreamed of, isn't it, trying to collapse the regime in Cuba. If, for instance, that did now happen because of, you know, Cuba was very much being propped up. The deal was Cuba sent doctors and Venezuela sent oil. It was keeping economy going. But there are huge issues even before this in Cuba recently with the power infrastructure kind of aging out, the economy really struggling. I mean, if Marco Rubio, if that did happen, if we saw that drastic change in Cuba, do you think that would really like springboard Marco Rubio, in a way, his political career looking forward to 2028 with that voter base in Florida. Would it really launch him?
- [08:59]
B
Do you think Marco Rubio would benefit from it? Definitely. And in fact, his increased presence, presence in the current administration has put him forward as one of the obvious successors going for a Republican, going for a presidential nomination next time around. But despite the fact that the Cuban regime is looking increasingly fragile and no longer is going to be receiving any Venezuelan oil and has less and less support from Russia, the Americans don't have a great track record in successfully making regime change happen. We just have to look back at a bit of history, 1961, the Bay of Pigs.
- [09:40]
A
Antonio I want to pick up on some comments in particular that Trump has made about Mexico because he has singled out President Sheinbaum for criticism. Now, he often does this with female leaders, primarily because they are female leaders. But do you think that XI should be concerned that he might decide, as we have seen, that he's not really that bothered about sovereignty anymore, and if there's what he claims to be a cartel or a drug operation going, that he'll do airstrikes in Mexico?
- [10:09]
C
So I think we're going into this brave new world in which I think the old international order is dying and the new order still hasn't been born. We are in this transition, and we used to live in a world of unipolar order. Of course, the US Is the most powerful influence, the rules. But now we are living. It used to be based on liberal democratic values, and now it's based on the sort of division of the world into spheres of influence and sort of great power competition, more than before it was leading up to this. So we don't really know how much he will dare to do. He, being Trump, almost dispenses with any name calling. But I thought it was very informative that in the first conference he did after the operation of Venezuela, he singled out not Cuba, which, by the way, he has been eerily silent on since the Venezuelan operation. He singled out Gustavo Petru, president of Colombia, which falls into the same category of Mexico in the sense that they are both full democracies, they are both democratic governments elected. I don't think even the maga, even the Trump regime, would say that the elections there were bad or were rigged. They are full elections, they are full democracies. And the fact that he has said in the conference, obviously stalked by one of the reporters, but he said that Gustavo Peter should watch his back, I think was even almost as informative as the Venezuelan operation itself, because he said that he's declaring that he has no constraints in terms of democratic alliances and making the world safe for democracy, which used to be a guiding principle of the U.S. foreign policy.
- [11:57]
A
And just finally on this, obviously Russia and China will be recalculating their positions now and their strategies for South America. In terms of the governments of South America, some of whom have elections coming up in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, what do you think this will do to South American politics? Do you think that there'll be a rise of strongmen again? Do you think that there'll be more outreach to the likes of Russia or China or maybe more sort of uniting together in this world, as you say, where it is multipolar? Do they need tighter relations a bit like an EU where they can kind of speak as one in South America for both of you?
- [12:37]
B
Well, Venezuela has more than 200 agreements and memorandums of understanding with Iran. Well, there not going to be looking towards that any longer. With the instability and the events in Iran moving quicker and quicker every day, I think they would be very. I think they're going to tiptoe around very carefully and countries like Iran, like Russia, like China, they're going to be much less willing to have deals with them. They're going to behave much more like. I think that the Argentinian president is behaving right now and looking towards business instead of.
- [13:17]
C
I was surprised to see an article by Reuters today that said that investors are looking into are more bullish towards Latin America because they think that the right wing, the right leaning, the conservative pro business elites will benefit from the Venezuela case. And my view is different. I think that the nationalism will tend to become more empowered with this operation, with the US interventionism. And it has always been a strong flag for the left, the need to oppose or be sort of very conscious of US interventionism, both militarily and directly during the military regimes up to the 1980s, but also indirectly through influencing policies and economic policies. So I think that the left tends to benefit slightly more than the right.
- [14:16]
A
Well, to Europe now and in recent weeks across the continent, there seems to be failures of resilience and preparedness. In Germany, an arson attack in Berlin has caused the longest power outage since World War II, raising questions about security and energy infrastructure. In Switzerland, despite having some of the most respected medical centers in the world, the New Year's bar fire immediately overwhelmed the country's major burns units of which there were only two. And in France, Spain and the uk, freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall are causing trapped transport chaos on the roads, rails and at the airports. Antonio, I know the preparedness of cities to disasters in particular, climate change is something you've done a lot of work on. Is this something mayors and local governments still aren't taking seriously enough?
- [15:03]
C
I think that many mayors are taking seriously. The problem is that the coordination or the incorporation of local governments and mayors into what is essentially at its core a more national security concern has been problematic in general when we talk about local, national relations globally. I think that in Europe, because of several regulations and moves from the European Union to sort of standardize measures and think about these issues, given the proximity to Russia, I think that these issues have slightly advanced more in recent years. So the European Union has issued instructions and actually plans to deliver later this year a plan for national governments especially. But I'm sure that local governments will be included in that in terms of instructions for the citizens. Also in terms of food security, which is a very big priority. But I think that the war in Ukraine has also provided some examples of what needs to be done in terms of energy resilience and sort of autonomy within cities and their surroundings, rather than depending on of long supply lines from other regions.
- [16:19]
A
And Sarah, if you look back at the past three decades, European citizens have enjoyed incredible stability. But then you hit the pandemic and we see the pressures on health, infrastructure and also food security at that time. Then we have the Ukraine war. We've had sort of six years now of things being not as the last sort of three decades had been before in terms of just comfortability, comfortableness and ease of living. Do you think, do you think governments have gripped this yet? There is an EU strategy for preparedness, but do you think there needs to be not just the kind of putting in place the structures, but also the kind of nudging the public mindset that has really happened.
- [16:58]
B
And actually Covid pushed that forward. Covid pushed actually a lot of things forward. In the eu, there's actually two commissioners, they're called Commissioners for Preparedness, and that's what they focus on. And the strategy that Antoni was mentioning was published last March, and we're going to be getting more details on it. And it does concern food security, water security and how to keep economic security going. But they also have been issuing. The EU issued a directive that, a suggestion that all people in the eu, all citizens, keep three days of essential supplies stocked up. I would say that there's something really, we have to remember that on the continent, these are all countries that, with the exception of Switzerland, who actually, despite their inability to handle all the burns victims in the ski resort fire and explosion, they have always stockpiled many essential supplies for their citizens. But these are all countries that have been invaded in the past within living memory. And if you look at the Nordic countries, they have extraordinary preparedness and they haven't had these kind of disasters. The Nordic and the Scandinavian countries. And the Nordic countries have much better, the Baltic countries. Now, I think it's important to remember that the foreign minister in the EU is Kaya Kallis, who was the prime minister of Estonia, which shares a border with Russia, and there's 20,000 Russian troops on the Russian side of the border and a tiny army of four and a half thousand on the Estonian side. She knows a thing or two about being Russian.
- [18:48]
A
And Antonio, I mean, we're hearing talks now about national service coming back. You know, France is the latest to kind of roll out a scheme. Do you think that that is going to become the norm now in most countries, not just because of issues with geopolitical tensions, but also climate disasters and having a kind of ready civilian force to deploy?
- [19:09]
C
Yeah, I think that the geopolitical situation that we would just discussing has been thrown into the air recently, but it has to escalate quite dramatically, I think, for Western European governments to implement any kind of mandatory draft, military draft. I think that, on the contrary, we've seen in recent decades, I would say the past decade, a slight contraction of some European militaries. And then with the Trump pressure on greater expenditure, this trend is starting to. But even if I think that, you know, there's still a lot of room to grow in terms of voluntary recruitment before the radical sort of drafts are put into place. And there is a societal debate that I think needs to occur that also relates to the sort of city preparedness, because in Ukraine, you've seen that the cities that prepared better are the ones that started after the war and they started to build underground bunkers and really, really impressive, but also exp. Infrastructure, the thing of energy autonomy for cities, islands of energy autonomy, that is expensive. So it's a societal debate. Is the threat so great that we want to invest, especially now that we're living this sort of fiscal crunch in so many European, including UK governments?
- [20:34]
A
Well, let's leave a very troubled earth for a few moments and head to space, which has for the past few decades, since the fall of the Soviet Union, been a beacon of human endeavour and international cooperation. But for how much longer? The stuff starting Gun has been fired on a new space race with two lunar missions set for 2027, NASA's Artemis 2 and China's Chang' e 7 reigniting geopolitical competition under a guise of peaceful exploration. The prize is huge, not only for rare materials and resources present on the moon, but as a stepping stone to heading forward to Mars. But the two superpowers are taking very different approaches. The US is relying heavily on the private sector while China is state led approach with support from Russia and a coalition of Global south partners. Tira, I think you were really keen to talk about this story. Why has it caught your eye?
- [21:30]
B
Well, the race for the moon and its resources is going on between China and the U.S. and as you said, this year is going to have 2 significant milestones in the first half of 2026. We're going to see the Artemis mission. Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo. Being a woman, of course, she's very wise and beautiful and, and that will be a manned space vehicle orbiting the moon. So that'll be the first time we're going into deep space in more than 50 years. And there's four people on that Artemis mission which more reflect people of the Earth. There's actually a woman, one of the men is a black American and there's a Canadian as well, mixed among the Americans. So a little bit more representative in the second half of the year. Changi 7, the Chinese remarkable that's named after their moon goddess and mythological moon goddess is going to land on the south pole of the moon near the Shackleton Crater, named after one of the great British Antarctic explorers. And it has a wonderful thing called a hopper that's going to be looking for water ice and water which is made of hydrogen and oxygen, which helps create rocket fuel is one of the. Is an important resource. But the Chinese are way ahead of the Americans in many ways. They want their moon base up, they want to land by 2030 as the Americans do and they want to be able to mine some of those rare.
- [23:03]
A
Earth elements because we have got used to, I mean for basically the Last sort of 28 years there has been a permanent human presence orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station that is being shuttered in the next few years. So I mean, the idea of a moon base sounds a bit outlandish, but it is going to become the new thing. And Antonio, I mean these resources are incredibly important, aren't they, that they could find up there?
- [23:28]
C
Yes. And I think we are moving into a privatization of those resources or at least of the missions that are going to go there. And as someone who has been more into the geopolitics than the spatial elements of global politics, I think it would be an interesting to see how the discussions around legislating, or legislate is the wrong word, because there is no international legislation. But how to create norms and cooperation along the lines of how to share those resources. Especially now that there is another element, another complicated factor. It's not just a geopolitical competition between states. It's also the participation of private sector and their interest in getting returns for their investment.
- [24:18]
A
It is the final frontier. But it is essentially lawless at the moment, isn't it? Which can create problems back down here on Earth. Tiro, I want to get your view, though. I mean, the space race captured global imagination in the 1960s and the 70s. It kind of tapered during the space shuttle era and during the International Space Station. It just became the normal thing. But do you think that going back to the moon like this and then potentially onto Mars will come kind of really capture imagination or will it actually provoke a lot of introspection about what's happening here on Earth?
- [24:51]
B
I think it will capture people's imagination again. And the private sector is actually already starting to do that, because the private sector, and there's many more actors in the private sector than the few billionaires that we hear a lot about, Musk and Bezos. I mean, already there's been three private landings on the moon and they bring down the cost and they improve the technology at much cheaper cost than state and government funded entities. But there is a. And they are there because there isn't really a treaty. This 1967 Outer Space Treaty says space should be used for peaceful purposes and no single country can claim a celestial body. Well, okay, don't claim all the moon, but you're going to be able to have your little moon base and who's going to come and they're not going to be able to parachute in with their SEAL soldiers and lift up somebody. People will be able to do what they want to, and the countries that want to do that or the private companies that want to do that will be able to do so.
- [25:59]
A
We'll see whether someone claims a whole hemisphere for themselves on the moon as well.
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C
At least we now know one place where Trump's special forces cannot reach.
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A
Yet you've tempted fate back here on top. Turning to lighter matters, the movie Marty supreme is now in cinemas and is a front runner in the Oscar race, particularly for lead actor Timothee Chalamet, who plays the titular Marty Mauser. The plot is loosely based on the memoirs of Mauser, who was an American table tennis player in the 1950s, short on money and desperate to get to a tournament in Japan. The movie details the lengths he'll go to to fund himself. Here's a scene from the movie between Chalamet and Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays an older, wealthy actress he's trying to extort funds from from.
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D
How do you live?
- [26:46]
A
Well, I live with the confidence. If I believe in myself, the money will follow.
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D
And what do you plan to do.
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B
If this whole dream of yours doesn't work out?
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A
That doesn't even enter my consciousness.
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D
Maybe it should.
- [27:04]
A
Now. As you might have detected from that exchange, Marty is unscrupulous and happy to exploit both friends and family's goodwill to get what he wants with little regard for the consequences. I caught the film at the weekend. It is brilliant. I highly recommend seeing it without distraction in cinema. But it has raised an interesting discussion on whether audiences can fully support a protagonist who is near a sociopathic. Firstly, do you think it's hard to support characters like this in films? Does it affect your enjoyment at all if you don't like the lead?
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B
Well, I mean, no. Look back at the Godfather of one of the great films of all times and look back at the character of Michael Corleone and who actually, you know, gets his own brother executed.
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A
Spoilers yet?
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B
Oh, sorry for the three people who haven't seen the Godfather, but we still love him and he still is a compelling character.
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A
You actually preempted my next question, as I said, with sort of gangster characters. You know, you do get like Pacino and sort of real outsiders like the Joker, they do get support. But when it's someone who is kind of trying to live by the law but is still not doing the right things, is it sort of more difficult to support them? Antonio?
- [28:22]
C
I love morally dubious characters. And there is another character also from the cast with a cast member of the Godfather called Insomnia with Al Pacino and his character. It's one of my favorite films that I probably.
- [28:37]
A
Christopher Nolan film, isn't it?
- [28:38]
C
I believe so, yes. It's with Hilary Swank. And he played. Plays this incredibly morally dubious character who goes to Alaska, sort of a punishment for some dodgy things that he has done. And he can't sleep. And gradually the lack of sleep becomes confused with his own internal conflict over whether he is a good person, a bad person for the things he has done. So I think that's really interesting. But morally dubious characters. My favorite, and after More than Insomnia, my favorite film is Blade Runner. And I was thinking, you know, if You're a cool person these days. Have to mention AI, right? Every. Everyone who is cool has to mention AI. And Roy, the, one of the replicants, the main replicant in Blade Runner, he is incredible. He is a sociopath and yet he has one of the most beautiful pieces of dialogue in cinema.
- [29:32]
A
In the tear in the rain.
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C
Yeah. All of this, all of that I have seen and experienced will be lost like tears in the rain. Right. So I think that AI, you know, this sort of cyborg dynamics are also very interesting and makes question, you know, our humanity or reinforce it, I don't know.
- [29:51]
B
But I think if you go back to one of the great masters who has some films and some things in the West End, his name is William Shakespeare. Look back at one of his great. His characters. Look at Macbeth, totally morally dubious and who did murder, but yet he has the sympathy of the audience. So I think that if you. It's all in Shakespeare, it usually comes back to recreate itself in new films and new plays. But a good writer can make a morally dubious character very sympathetic and very attractive.
- [30:28]
A
Well, it sounds like everyone here is on board. Well, finally on today's show, our weekly letter comes from Istanbul. Here's Monocle's departing correspondent from the Turkish city, Hanna Luscinda. Sarah Smith.
- [30:48]
D
It's a perfect December sunset over the Bosphorus. Wisps of icy cloud reaching through pastel pinks and yellows over the domes and minettes on the skyline. I've never grown tired of this view from my first weeks in Istanbul nearly 13 years ago. Now I've always returned to the huge rocks that that line the inner city coastline. The perfect place to go with a beer and a friend in the evening. But Istanbul's changed a lot in my time here. The skyline, although timeless, becomes more crowded each year. More harsh edged luxury towers joining the graceful curves of the bridges and mosques. The city's growing. But the figures on the highway signs at Istanbul's boundaries have never changed. They still have its popular population at 14 million, as it was in 2013. But that can't be right. People have poured into Istanbul in this past decade, as they have in every decade since the 1950s, when the city's population was less than a million. Turks from Anatolia and foreigners from everywhere are drawn to this place that often feels like it's at the centre of the world. Istanbul's municipality has tried to calculate the real population by looking at water usage, but everyone who lives here has their own estimate. 20 million 25. A taxi driver once told me he thought it was 30 million, although that felt far fetched even for Istanbul. The new foreigners have formed nebulous subsets within the city's strata. At the bottom, there are the only undocumented, the refugees without papers, mostly from Syria and Afghanistan, hiding out in their homes to avoid the police checkpoints that often spring up in Istanbul's poorer suburbs. Above them are the documented Syrians, many of whom have learnt Turkish to fluency, and above them, the Syrians who have gained Turkish citizenship. A small portion of the millions who came, the Westerners tend to be taken teachers and journalists living in the scruffy bohemian neighbourhoods. There are a few Russians still who escaped totalitarianism and conscription in Putin's Russia after the invasion of Ukraine began. The Russians were Suddenly everywhere in 2022, cafes in the busiest districts, even started writing their boards in Cyrillic. Then they left just as suddenly a couple of years later when the Turkish government stopped issuing new residency permits to Russians. Then there are the most elusive newcomers, the ultra rich who since 2018 have bought Turkish passports with property investments in the new lux gated suburbs on Istanbul's outskirts. They mostly come from Iran, the Gulf and other parts of the Middle east. And they live a life of apart, gliding from apartments to high end shopping malls in air conditioned cars. The rest of us slog it out among the millions. You feel the population growth on the pavements. There's nowhere in central Istanbul where you can walk in a straight line, unimpeded by rush hour or dawdling tourists. Buses and metro carriages are packed on summer days. In national Hud days, the public ferries out to the Prince's island sit low in the water under the weight of the people packed onto them. And the visitors are rushing in too, in growing numbers since the pandemic restrictions were lifted. There are lines for every museum and palace and the restaurants are booked out for months. New openings feature in the best magazines like Monocle, as they should. The city's cuisine is cutting edge and its top half hotels are world class. And yet, at the same time, there's an exodus from Istanbul underway, like a hidden undercurrent against the tide of people coming in. Just months after I moved to Turkey in 2013, the Gezi park protests erupted, manifesting years of pent up youth anger against Turkey's increasing Islamization, its corruption, its rampant construction actors and its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The protest lasted for weeks, occupying Istanbul's vast central Taksim Square and showcasing Turkey's millennials as photogenic, articulate and humorous protagonists. The protests ended when Erdogan sent in the riot police to Taksim en masse, clearing the protesters tents with tear gas, rubber bullet bullets and batons, and giving the youth their first taste of state violence. The Gezi arrests began Years later, in 2017, after Erdogan had become president, crushed a coup attempt, changed Turkey's constitution and launched a huge crackdown against any and all of his opponents. By now, Turkey was a changed place. Nobody protested anymore. Many of the people accused of participating in Gezi were now in their late 30s, with families. Others, like philanthropist and peace activist Osman Kavala, are decades older and have now been detained for nearly a decade. Hundreds of people have been convicted of attempting to overthrow the constitution and handed full life sentences. Thousands more have fled the country, forming communities of intellectuals, artists and journalists in exile in London, Berlin and elsewhere. And now I'm joining them. The weight of Istanbul has grown too heavy. The economy is in perma crisis. The city is under constant risk of a catastrophic earthquake. And the arrests and investigations are widening way beyond political crimes to illegal gambling and drugs and tax EV3, vices that are not uncommon in Turkey. Top footballers, actors and agents have been arrested and the message is clear. We can find something on anyone at any time. So keep quiet and don't talk about politics. I never thought that Gezi was a big factor in my decision to stay in Turkey this long. But now I reflect, I realize that it was. It was my glimpse into the Turkey that's both possible and not the tolerant, creative, youthful force that could take the country into a better future. But this time, at least, it couldn't. Erdogan won for now and for the foreseeable future, that other Turkey will live on in the discussion groups and mehanis of London, where I too am heading. But I'm sure that I'll see Istanbul again in better times. And I always know that the sunset over the Bosphorus will stay the same. Whatever else has changed For Monocle in Istanbul, I'm Hannah Lucinda Smith.
- [37:57]
A
Monocle's Hannah Lucinda Smith there. Well, that is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. A big thanks to my panelists today, Tira Chubart and Antonio Sample. Pow. Today's show was produced by Monica Lillis and researched by Anneliese Maynard. Our sound engineer was Steph chungu. I'm Vincent McEvin here in London. I'll be back with the Monocle Daily tomorrow at the same time. Goodbye and thank you for listening.
- [38:33]
D
Sa.