The Monocle Minute

Mark Rutte, who took office as Nato’s secretary general in October, visited two of the military alliance’s most troublesome members this week. On Monday he was in Ankara, where he met president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and executives from Turkey’s defence industry. On Tuesday, he was in Athens to talk to prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as well as Greece’s foreign and defence ministers. The two neighbours have been on the brink of war in recent years but Rutte’s mediating skills offer fresh hope of bringing stability back to Nato’s most fractious flank.

Rutte’s talent for alliance-building, often with elements of the radical right, was often controversial while he was serving as the Netherlands’ prime minister: it was his proposal to tighten rules on family reunification for asylum seekers that led to his resignation last year. But he was also renowned for his staying power, which earned him the nickname “Teflon Mark”, and it is these skills that will prove invaluable when mediating between Turkey and Greece. Their rows over maritime borders and undersea gas rights are perma-issues. In the past few years, Nato has often been their sole channel of communication during the most dangerous and critical moments.

As the need for Nato unity has become more pressing, Erdogan has accused the alliance of favouritism towards Greece and used Turkey’s veto to stall the membership bids of Sweden and Finland for his own domestic gain. Neither is Greece an easy partner. Rutte’s visit to Athens was greeted by left-wing demonstrators protesting against the alliance’s involvement in Ukraine. Rutte’s opposition to EU bailouts for Greece a decade ago has also not been forgotten.

Following Donald Trump’s US election victory, smoothing out issues between Nato members has become a priority. Rutte’s generally warm welcome in both Turkey and Greece suggests that his hard-to-dent persona is enduring in his new role, where it will be needed more than ever.

Hannah Lucinda Smith is Monocle’s Istanbul correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Could urban air mobility (UAM) – a preoccupation of urbanism conferences but still in the realms of science fiction – be about to take off? California-based air-taxi company Archer Aviation has announced that it is on track to begin commercial services in the UAE by late 2025. The aim is to ease traffic and cut travel times, reducing the commute between Dubai and Abu Dhabi from one hour to between 20 and 30 minutes in duration. The company’s electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft are battery-powered too, giving them solid green credentials.

Flying taxis were planned for the Paris Olympics (the idea was scrapped at the last minute) and the US Federal Aviation Administration recently created a new category for these new electric vehicles – but this is the most promising UAM announcement to date. “It’s quite exciting what could develop here,” journalist Mustafa Alrawi tells The Monocle Minute. “There is a lot of demand for air taxis. The idea is that they will be integrated into the wider transport network to ensure that the price keeps falling at scale.”

The small South American nation of Suriname, where almost a fifth of all citizens live in poverty, has announced a “royalties for everyone” programme to share the wealth from recently discovered oil and gas reserves. Over the next 20 years, Suriname is expected to make about €9.5bn from its new resources. According to the country’s president, Chan Santokhi, every citizen will receive about €714, with an annual interest rate of 7 per cent.

The move follows a similar decision by Guyana and follows the UN’s Cop29 climate-change conference in Azerbaijan, which fell short of establishing a credible strategy to phase out fossil fuels. As Suriname becomes the latest South American nation to adopt petro-politics, it’s crucial that it continues to work on alternatives. After all, oil wealth does not guarantee economic success, as nearby Venezuela has found out.

Athens has long been Europe’s capital of outdoor cinema but its most historic movie theatres are struggling to keep up in an era of online viewing, economic instability and overtourism. One company, however, is determined to revive the city’s art-house venues by renovating them with investment funds while preserving their heritage. Established in 2020, Cinobo (short for Cinema No Borders) is the first Greek platform dedicated entirely to streaming.

Its founder, Dafni Bechtsi, has started organising open-air screenings of everything from cinematic classics to lesser-known gems across the capital city, while offering Cinobo subscribers free access to cinemas in Athens and Thessaloniki. At a time when cinemas are struggling to attract viewers, creating a close-knit community of film lovers might seem like a tall order. But Cinobo’s reimagining of how we consume movies beyond just streaming is a welcome plot twist.

Mike Batt is known for creating one of the most well-known British novelty pop acts of the 1970s, The Wombles. Batt wrote and composed the theme song to the children’s TV series, which led to the rising popularity of The Wombling Song. Batt has also composed with artists such as Carla Bruni and Katie Melua, and worked on various musicals including The Phantom of the Opera. He sits down with Georgina Godwin to discuss his memoir, The Closest Thing to Crazy: My Life of Musical Adventures.