December 31, 2025
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Istanbul, Turkey-Istanbul is a city that refuses simplicity. Standing on the Galata Bridge at dusk, watching ferries crisscross the Golden Horn while the call to prayer echoes from a hundred minarets, one is struck by the profound paradox of a place that is at once ancient and modern, sacred and commercial, chaotic yet somehow ordered. The city straddles two continents, bridging Europe and Asia not merely geographically but civilizationally, serving as a living testament to the proposition that history and futurity need not be adversaries. Founded in the seventh century BCE and having served as capital to three great empires—Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman—Istanbul has grown from fewer than one million inhabitants in 1923 to approximately sixteen million today, making it the largest city in Europe and the world’s most visited metropolis, welcoming over twenty million international visitors in 2023 alone [1]. The first and most powerful insight one gleans from walking its streets is that development is not linear. Successful societies layer; they do not erase.
This lesson resonates with particular urgency for Guyana, a small South American nation of approximately 800,000 people that now finds itself at its own civilizational crossroads. On May 10, 2015, ExxonMobil struck oil in waters some one hundred miles off Guyana’s coast—a discovery that energy analysts have called “perhaps the most significant oil find anywhere on the planet in generations” [2]. The resource base, estimated at eleven billion barrels, has since transformed Guyana from one of South America’s poorest nations into the world’s fastest-growing economy. Production began in December 2019, less than five years from discovery—a timeline “nearly unheard of” in the industry—and has since ramped up to 650,000 barrels per day, with projections reaching 1.3 million barrels by 2027 and 1.7 million by 2030 [2]. The country’s GDP, which stood at $4.3 billion in 2015, is projected to reach nearly $26 billion in 2025 and $41 billion by the end of the decade. Guyana was elected to the United Nations Security Council in 2023, and energy historian Daniel Yergin has credited the nation with helping to steady global energy markets amid recent geopolitical upheaval [2]. The transformation has been nothing short of astonishing.
Yet with this promise comes profound peril. The specter of the “resource curse”—the paradox that countries rich in natural resources often experience weaker economic growth, greater corruption, and greater political instability than their resource-poor counterparts—looms large over Guyana’s future [3]. The Harvard International Review has warned that Guyana faces three interrelated challenges: the risk of Dutch disease weakening its non-oil economy, the danger of oil revenues eroding good governance, and the threat of inflamed ethnic tensions as different communities compete for their share of the windfall [3]. Venezuela, Guyana’s neighbor to the west, offers a cautionary tale: petroleum once accounted for more than 75 percent of its exports, and when oil prices collapsed, hyperinflation reached an estimated 65,000 percent by 2019 [3]. The temptation for Guyana will be to imagine development as a clean break from its past—to believe that oil wealth can simply wash away the complexities of colonial history, ethnic division, and post-independence struggle. But as Istanbul’s enduring legacy demonstrates, the challenge is not one of replacement but of integration.
In Istanbul, history is not a relic to be preserved behind glass; it is infrastructure, not ornament. Mosques, markets, universities, and transit systems are built around and within structures that have stood for centuries. The city’s memory is active, not nostalgic. Since 2019, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality has undertaken an extensive restoration campaign, reopening dozens of previously inaccessible sites ranging from Byzantine-era fortifications to late Ottoman-period factories. The Bulgur Palas, a century-old mansion that once served as an Ottoman Bank archive, has been restored as a cultural center complete with a 150-seat library, exhibition space, garden café, and observation terrace offering sweeping views of the Marmara Sea [1]. A nineteenth-century weaving factory that initially produced fezzes and military uniforms now hosts exhibitions of twentieth-century optical and kinetic art from the Tate Collection [1]. As Mahir Polat, the deputy secretary-general who has spearheaded this restoration drive, observed: “Istanbul cannot fit into a single photograph; wherever you go in the city, you can find these little gems” [1]. The city does not “preserve” history in the sense of freezing it in amber; it uses history, making it a living part of the urban fabric.
For Guyana, this offers a powerful lesson. The nation’s history—marked by colonialism, Indigenous resilience, African enslavement, Indian indentureship, and post-independence struggle—is not a burden to be shed but the very foundation upon which a national identity can be built. The country’s demographic composition reflects this complex heritage: approximately 40 percent of the population is of Indo-Guyanese origin, descendants of Indian indentured workers; 29 to 30 percent are Afro-Guyanese, descendants of enslaved Africans; roughly 20 percent are of mixed heritage; and about 10 percent are Indigenous Amerindians [4]. British “divide-and-rule” policies deliberately pitted these communities against each other, and post-independence politics have often devolved into a zero-sum competition between ethnic blocs, with the Indo-Guyanese-dominated People’s Progressive Party and the Afro-Guyanese-aligned A Partnership for National Unity alternating in power [4]. The country’s motto—”One People, One Nation, One Destiny”—speaks to an aspirational unity that has proven difficult to achieve in practice. Oil wealth must sit atop this memory, not bury it. Colonial history, Indigenous heritage, African resilience, and post-independence struggle are not obstacles to development; they are the infrastructure for national identity.
Istanbul also teaches that the state matters—but so does the street. The city’s efficient public transportation, modern airports, and reliable utilities are evidence of a capable and effective state presence. Yet simultaneously, the streets pulse with the energy of a vibrant informal economy: street vendors hawking simit (sesame-crusted bread rings), family-owned businesses that have operated for generations, artisans crafting traditional wares. The legitimacy of the state, it seems, comes not from absolute control but from balance—from creating a framework within which both the formal and informal economies can thrive. For Guyana, this is a critical lesson. Oil-era governance must strengthen state capacity without suffocating entrepreneurship. The International Monetary Fund has noted that Guyana’s non-oil economy “continues to reflect a solid, broad-based performance across sectors, especially construction and services” [2], suggesting that the country has thus far avoided the worst manifestations of Dutch disease. More than 6,000 Guyanese currently work in support of ExxonMobil’s operations, representing nearly 70 percent of the local oil and gas workforce, and over $2.5 billion has been spent with more than 1,700 Guyanese suppliers over the past decade [2]. Regulation should enable small and medium enterprises, not crowd them out.
Perhaps the most important lesson Istanbul offers is the virtue of patience. The city’s grand mosques, sprawling palaces, and enduring institutions were not built in a single generation. They are the product of centuries of ambition, investment, and long-term thinking. Institutions outlast leaders; long horizons temper political impatience. Guyana’s oil revenues demand 25- to 50-year thinking, particularly in education, infrastructure, and energy transition. Short-term political wins risk long-term national fragility. The country has already taken promising steps in this direction. In 2009—six years before the oil discovery—Guyana launched its pioneering Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), recognizing that its vast rainforests, which cover roughly two-thirds of its territory and store an estimated 19.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, are vital assets in the global fight against climate change [5]. An early partnership with Norway, which pledged up to $250 million to help preserve these forests, established the strategy’s credibility and provided vital seed funding [5]. When the oil was discovered, Guyana chose not to abandon its environmental commitments but to strengthen them, creating LCDS 2030. In 2022, Guyana became the first nation to receive private-sector validation for forest conservation-based jurisdictional carbon credits, leading to a landmark $750 million agreement with Hess Corporation [5]. The country is now expanding its protected areas from 9 to 30 percent of its land mass by 2030 [5]. Oil wealth is being treated not as an end goal but as a bridge to a sustainable future.
Education is the civilizational glue that holds this vision together. In Istanbul, universities, religious schools, and cultural institutions anchor the city, producing continuity across upheaval. Knowledge is treated as strategic, not decorative. For Guyana, oil revenues must be converted into human capital. Without deep investment in education—technical, civic, and ethical—resource wealth will dissipate. The country is already building twelve hospitals, multiple schools, seven hotels, two large highways, its first deep-water port, and a gas energy plant that will double energy output and halve power bills [3]. But infrastructure alone is not enough. The government must invest in building world-class educational institutions, in training teachers, and in creating a curriculum that prepares citizens for the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. This is the only way to ensure that the benefits of the oil boom are translated into a lasting legacy of prosperity and progress.
A diverse society also requires shared ethical commitments. In Istanbul, faith is visible but not monolithic; public ethics are shaped by shared moral frameworks rather than enforced uniformity. Moral seriousness coexists with pluralism. For Guyana, with its diverse religious and ethnic communities, this offers a model. Fairness, dignity, and accountability cannot be legislated alone; they must be cultivated culturally. President Irfaan Ali’s “One Guyana” initiative, launched in 2020, explicitly aims to heal ethnic rifts and foster national cohesion. The slogan—now printed on passports and currency—is described as “a unifying concept… a rallying cry to bring the diverse cultures and races of our country together” [4]. Whether this initiative can succeed in channeling economic gains into shared national pride, rather than deepening ethnic fault lines, remains to be seen. But the effort itself is essential.
Inequality, too, must be confronted openly. Like any major global city, Istanbul is home to both great wealth and great poverty. The city does not pretend that inequality does not exist; instead, it seeks to manage it through policies that promote social mobility and access to opportunity. Guyana’s oil wealth will widen inequality unless policy is intentional. Transparency, social investment, and regional equity must be explicit priorities. The country’s Natural Resource Fund, a sovereign wealth fund modeled after Norway’s successful example, is a promising step in this direction. Norway’s fund, now valued at more than $1.3 trillion, has helped that nation avoid the resource curse by converting oil windfalls into sustainable growth that is independent of oil [3]. Guyana has also joined the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which requires member countries to publicly disclose how their governments award resource rights and use oil revenues [3]. In May 2023, a Guyanese court ruled that Exxon must offer an “unlimited guarantee” to cover the cost of a potential oil spill—a ruling that, while appealed, demonstrates the judiciary’s willingness to hold even powerful corporations accountable [3].
Great cities endure because they adapt without forgetting. Failure comes not from change but from unmoored change—transformation that severs the connection to history and values. Istanbul has been transformed by centuries of migration, conquest, and trade, yet it has never lost its essential character. Guyana now stands at a similar hinge moment. Like Istanbul, it can become a place where civilizations meet, where diversity is celebrated, and where economic growth serves as a means to a more just and equitable society. Or it can become a place where opportunity overwhelms cohesion, where the rush to modernize erases the memory of what came before.
Development is ultimately moral, not merely economic. The question is not how fast Guyana grows, but what kind of society that growth produces. Will it be a society that honors its history while building for the future? Will it be a society that invests in its people, not just its infrastructure? Will it be a society that manages its diversity as a source of strength rather than a cause of division? The lessons from Istanbul are clear: successful development requires patience, wisdom, and a deep respect for the layers of history that make a place what it is. Oil will shape Guyana’s economy. Only wisdom will shape its future.
References
[1] Hattam, J. (2024, July 1). Istanbul’s plan to save its cultural soul. BBC Travel. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240701-istanbuls-plan-to-save-its-cultural-soul
[2] ExxonMobil. (2025, May 16). High-speed Guyana: An energy superpower practically overnight. ExxonMobil. https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/locations/guyana/news-releases/an-energy-superpower-practically-overnight
[3] Mao, W. (2023, September 27). A Path to Prosperity for Oil-Rich Guyana. Harvard International Review. https://hir.harvard.edu/a-path-to-prosperity-for-oil-rich-guyana/
[4] Blackman, T. R. (2025, March 23). Guyana’s National Identity in Comparative Perspective: Lessons from Switzerland and Turkey. Guyana Business Journal. https://guyanabusinessjournal.com/2025/03/guyanas-national-identity-in-comparative-perspective-lessons-from-switzerland-and-turkey/
[5] Diaz, L. (2024, December 16). Guyana’s low-carbon model for resource-led development. Atlantic Council. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/energysource/guyanas-low-carbon-model-for-resource-led-development/
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Editor’s Note
Editor’s Note
This marks the final GBJ Essay of 2025. As Guyana stands at the threshold of a transformative decade, we remain committed to rigorous, independent analysis that honors the intelligence of our readers. We do not traffic in easy answers or comfortable narratives. Instead, we ask difficult questions, examine inconvenient data, and insist that a nation’s future deserves more than cheerleading—it demands clear-eyed assessment.
If our work has served you this year—if it has sharpened your thinking, challenged your assumptions, or simply provided a space for serious engagement with the forces reshaping our country—we ask you to support it. Independence is not free. The work of approximating truth, holding power accountable, and imagining what Guyana might yet become requires resources and resolve.
From all of us at the Guyana Business Journal, we wish you a reflective close to 2025 and a purposeful New Year. The work continues in 2026. The questions remain. The stakes have never been higher.
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The Guyana Business Journal Editorial Board welcomes reflections and submissions at terrence.blackman@guyanabusinessjournal.com.
