Turkey's space strategy: Who will be the first to go to the hotel on the Moon?

Years ago in Kayseri, during a conference I was giving to local administrators, I tried to explain what issues leaders around the world were truly preoccupied with. In those days, Elon Musk had just founded SpaceX. Peter Thiel was rethinking the idea of the state from scratch and pondering island nations. Sir Richard Branson had begun openly talking about space hotels with his Virgin group of companies. Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, was in a corner that no one paid attention to, trying to dismantle and understand old NASA vehicles.

I still remember the moment I realized that when I said “You know Jeff Bezos” in the hall, no one recognized him. I even encountered a polite intervention from the moderator. When the presentation ended, I thought there would be a question. The topic was important, there was so much to tell. Someone approached and asked, “We brought you pasta as a gift, where should we leave it?”

Years have passed. Two news items that crossed my path this week brought that day back to life in my mind. The first was Japan's space research agency succeeding in generating electricity from the Sun in space and transmitting it to Earth via microwaves. The successful transfer of 1.2 kW of energy over 50 meters in laboratory and field tests might seem like a technical detail. However, when scaled, this represents a threshold that could change all the balances in the energy sector.

The second piece of news was that ideas once considered “far-fetched” are now being discussed with serious timelines. Scenes we watch in science fiction films are slowly moving into news reports. A US-based venture has begun accepting $250,000 deposits for the hotel it plans to build on the lunar surface. The first hotel is targeted to open in 2032.

Until today, going to space was mostly justified by research purposes. Now the picture is changing. Companies are treating space as a new economic layer. The cost of staying on the Moon is staggering. Deposits ranging from $250,000 to $1 million are being requested. Those who make this payment will earn the right to participate in lunar missions starting in 2029. The first four-person lunar hotel is planned to be launched in 2032.

The teams running these projects are small, but their goals are big. A vision is being drawn that is not limited to a lunar hotel, but continues with permanent bases, roads, and infrastructure projects. In the long term, Mars is also on this list. On one side, there are countries systematically planning to generate energy from space and transmit it to Earth. On the other, there are ventures scheduling the Moon as a tourist destination. These are not dreams. They are long games that require capital, engineering, and patience.

Energy, transportation, and tourism are shifting simultaneously. The venue is no longer just the Earth. It was no coincidence that the name Jeff Bezos did not resonate in the hall years ago. The topics that no one cared about back then are determining the global agenda today.

We are at a similar threshold today. When I first came to Mersin, I visited KOSGEB to understand what could be done. I quickly realized that the institution's main areas of interest were beauty centers, hairdressers, and sandwich shops. Throughout the meeting, the same sentence was repeated: “You do not have the NACE code for this support.” As I was leaving, out of curiosity, I asked the KOSGEB Mersin manager: If we wanted to get support for space transportation, which NACE code would we need to find? The manager laughed for a long time. “We just wrote that on the list, of course we don't give it to anyone,” he said.

That is the picture. A line stretching from the producer who brought pasta as a gift at the end of a conference in Kayseri, to the KOSGEB manager who lists space transportation among the projects they support but gives it to no one. As long as this vision continues, we will only go to space as tourists. It is sad.