MYANMAR IN 2026: WHAT IS THE FUTURE? – SEAN TURNELL

Professor Turnell was an Australian advisor to deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi. He was taken into custody in February 2021 soon after the military seized control of the South East Asian country in a coup in February 2021. Professor Turnell spent 21 months in a Myanmar prison and was only released after a public campaign and negotiations by the Australian government. In his memoir of his experience An Unlikely Prisoner, Sean Turnell has revealed his experience in one of the most terrifying prisons in South-East Asia, where he was held for 650 days. With Professor’s economic background and experience of the Myanmar coup, on Wednesday January 28 2026, he addressed The Sydney Institute to give an evaluation of Myanmar under the military government’s junta.

MYANMAR IN 2026: WHAT IS THE FUTURE?

SEAN TURNELL

Burma (Myanmar) in 2026 is a disaster.

Since the military coup of February 2021, the country’s GDP has halved, the proportion of the population in extreme poverty has doubled, un-and under-employment has soared, foreign and local investment has collapsed, inflation (at around 30 per cent  per annum) is nearly ten times the ASEAN average.

Burma’s currency, the kyat, has lost 80 per cent of its value. Foreign debt has doubled and repayments are in arrears. Budget deficits are entrenched and “printing money” is the only recourse the ruling junta has to finance itself.

More than 8,000 people (mostly young) have been killed as a direct consequence of the coup and its aftermath. Over 32,000 people have been arrested for resisting the junta, of which over two-thirds remain in prison. The latter includes Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of Burma’s civilian government from 2016 to 2021, and the winner in 1991 of the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2026, most of the other senior members of the civilian government continue to languish in Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison and other places.

Engulfed in what is sometimes referred to as a civil war, Burma’s military junta has become increasingly violent, disproportionate, and indiscriminate in its effort at repressing resistance to its rule. Nearly four million people have become internally displaced, a million more have fled abroad. Burma is an exporter to our region of people, chaos, and crime.

A pariah in the West and in other countries concerned about human rights, Burma is subject to an array of economic and financial sanctions. Economically and politically, Burma has become a vassal state to China, the only significant ally Min Aung Hlaing’s junta has.

My role

You will have noted the priority I assign economic aspects of Burma’s crisis in what I have said so far. This is no accident, of course, and it reflects my involvement in the country, but especially in the role of Special Economic Consultant to the then State Counsellor of Myanmar, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Appointed to this role by Daw Suu herself, it was the highlight of my nearly 30 years of scholarly and other involvement in the country. Despite my rather odd title and the informal nature of my position, in no sense was I freelancing in the job. I was, in fact, contracted by the Australian Government to provide assistance to Burma’s democratic and economic transition. I was paid by Australia (as a part of our aid program), and at no time did I receive any remuneration or any other financial gain from the Burmese government. Throughout my tenure, the Australian Government sought no commercial nor any other advantage from my work, or privileged inside knowledge of Burmese policy making.

My objectives in the role were the same of those as the Burmese economic reformers who I worked with and supported. We sought to bring about:

• Widespread liberalisation of the economy.
• Fiscal prudence and macroeconomic stability.
• Openness to trade and foreign investment.
• Reform, and ultimately independence, of the central bank.
• The clean-up and revitalisation of the banking system.
• The promotion of mobile payments and other leap-frogging technologies.
• Greater investment in health, education, infrastructure and energy (especially electricity); the reduction in military allocations (sic).
• The revitalisation of Burma’s agricultural sector.
• Transformed “governance”, secure sound property rights, land title, and the rule of law more broadly.

Critically, we also sought to reduce Burma’s dependence upon China, and to extricate the country from some of the worst of the BRI projects that had been agreed to by previous military regimes. We had some significant successes on this front, which made China decidedly unhappy.

So, the list of what we were trying to do was (even in this briefest of tellings) a long one, and it made Burma’s reformers many enemies amongst the vested interests, local and foreign.

I did not have diplomatic immunity in my role. This mattered when the coup came, and when I was arrested (live on the BBC World Service) and subsequently put on trial for breaching Burma’s Official Secrets Act of 1914. In essence, I was accused of engaging in espionage, with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her Ministers as my witting and unwitting agents. We were put on trial, found guilty (surprise!). I was sentenced to five years imprisonment with hard labour, to be served in an isolated up-country prison initially, and then in Insein. I was placed amongst the death-row prisoners for a time.

I survived because of my family and friends, the Australian government (our Yangon Embassy especially), the governments of the USA and the UK (King Charles was a big supporter) and, last and not least, by my courageous Burmese friends (old, and new-found in the prison).

Mentally I survived by instinctive pacing and counting, and recalling the great and old stories I had stored away from a lifetime of obsessive reading. The titles would cause many an academic colleague to choke on their avocado toast, since the books I drew on included such tomes as The Colditz Story, The Great Escape, The Railway Man, Lord of the Rings, the books of Primo Levi and Solzhenitsyn, as well as lashings of Enid Blyton and Captain W.E. Johns. The King James Bible played a part too. Later my memories were augmented by new books passed on to me – largely by family and friends via the Embassy. By the end I’d received over 100 of such books. Amongst the standouts: Clive James’ Cultural Amnesia, biographies of Alexander Hamilton, Washington, Grant, T.E. Lawrence, Teddy Roosevelt, Orwell’s 1984, books of economic and monetary history, some of the classics of Greece and Rome, many a trashy thriller. All became the subject of discussions amongst fellow prisoners who comprised what we dubbed the barbwire university.

After many horrors, I was suddenly released on November 17, 2022.

The future – what chance of regime collapse in Burma?

On the face of what I have presented here, Burma’s ruling junta is surely not long for the world. Of course, there is no precision in these things, but amongst the intelligence community the survivability of regimes such as Burma’s are often said to rest upon six rough and ready pillars: Loyalty of the military and security services; elite cohesion; unity of the opposition; legitimacy narratives; the socio-economic contract; the international environment.

In 2026, how do each of these look for Myanmar’s junta?

1. Loyalty of the military and security services. Mostly solid through fear in my experience, but brittle. Some defections already, but these could become a flood according to battlefield developments. It is not a factor for regime change until it is underway. Burma’s junta has been consistently losing the kinetic war since the coup, but point 6 below (China) will surely come into play.
2. Elite cohesion. In public Myanmar’s elite business (including the so-called “cronies”) and senior civil service say very little either way with respect to the junta. Motivated by fear and opportunism, in private such elites are near-universally excoriating of the incompetence that has brought Burma so low. Fair weather friends of the junta, in short, but unreliable allies for the opposition. In the prison Daw Aung San Suu Kyi told me this cohort were “cowards upon whom it was impossible to count on”. They could be a factor driving regime change but, as per above, probably only after obvious momentum in that direction.
3. Unity of the opposition. In my judgement, the opposition to Burma’s military junta is more united now than it has been in more than six decades. Fissures remain, especially between the dominant Bama democracy groups and the so-called Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs). But, with a few exceptions, in 2026 I expect any such divisions to be subordinated to the understanding that only opposition unity can defeat the junta. Accordingly, and with the personal circumstances of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as a wildcard, the strength of the opposition to the junta will be a strong factor in its downfall.
4. Legitimacy narratives. Burma’s military has traditionally extolled a narrative that pitches them as the only entity capable of holding the country together. They also used to tell stories of their valour (mostly false) in achieving Burma’s independence in 1948, but they seem to have given up this part of their mythology – swamped by the scale and depravities of their wars against the Burmese people since. Compared to the profound credibility of the story of the Burmese people’s relentless struggle for freedom, the narrative of legitimacy is a strong if long term factor for change.
5. Socio-economic contract. The expectation that Burma’s rulers might deliver peace and prosperity has never been fulfilled, and has been completely shattered by the coup and subsequent mismanagement of the economy. Burma’s ruling junta has never made the trains run on time. Apart from defeating the junta on the battlefield, this factor is surely the opposition movement’s strongest claim on confidence for soon and likely regime change.
6. International environment. While most of the world holds them in contempt, Burma’s junta enjoys the support of such global good citizens as Russia, Belarus, Iran and North Korea. Above all, however, they have China, which has recently been behind a sham election designed to provide the junta with a fig leaf of legitimacy. In truth, the junta has sold Burma’s sovereignty for China’s support. Burma is now little but a vassal state of China, but this fact may be the junta’s biggest trump card in the short run. The US, the West, ASEAN? Washington alone could be decisive.

So, that’s three pillars severely eroded for the junta, two undecided, one supporting their survival. Of course, this is crude in almost every dimension even as it gets us thinking perhaps. For sure, Burma’s junta will try to kill their way out if all else fails. I hope it won’t be enough. Burma will be free, sooner rather than later, and it will probably catch us unawares. Let us then be ready.