Ok I have finally taken a closer look with this promo. I was trapped in the high Arctic the past weeks and finally got back to examine this like what I did to SK almost a year ago. (some blogs even took my entire analysis of SK system without crediting, thanks bunches.)
My main concern is that this seems to be much lower in return, but it still is relatively good value.

• TK miles on own metal is very strange, but okay-ish value.
  • in Y you pay normal industry prices with low surcharges, but if that price gets you from NKC to CND, it shows the inherent value of TK miles in its core strength: unparalleled route network. I will mostly talk about J for the rest of the evaluation.
  • anytime awards in long haul J are mostly 130k which is not good, but not insane. In a clutch this can take you to every corner of the world.
  • surcharges are not too good in J, 300-ish USD each way while is not a gut punch, but definitely gets in the way of extracting outstanding values on most routes, especially you have to pay 130k each way on a lot of days
  • saver awards are good value in 65k to most long haul destinations in Far East and North America
  • South America is 75k is also very good value
  • Medium haul are okay-ish value to Europe, but central/north Africa is bad value with surcharges, while South Africa is slightly better
  • Oceania is very bad, 140k for own metal with surcharges is DL-level of greedy
  • however, how they release the awards make no sense. based in YVR, I find it very nice that a lot of IST-YVR dates have saver, but the entire year has 0 day with YVR-IST in saver, or SEA-IST, this must be some whack glitch in the system, but it just demonstrates the unreliability even on their own metal. I may need to position of LAX/SFO if I want to depart from Americas.
• Addative pricing in redemption is horrible. There is a reason why people talk about AY QR avios more than BA, you are only going to visit IST that many times.
• upgrading Y to J using TK miles is mediocre value, as it gives you significantly expanded availability, but the upgrade mile cost is literally the same as redemption at saver level, and you just swap out the copay in taxes for the original Y ticket price.
• TK miles on partners have extremely high variability, ranging from pretty good to the worst of the industry. I may be mistaken as I only spent about 1 day on the Star Partner searches, but if anyone has any information, feel free to correct me.
  • theoretically EWR-HNL can be had for 10k, but it is impossible to find. through cursory searches, no AC/UA/NH/CA domestic flight can be found, rendering this "'domestic is 10k" sweet spot useless. (If I have to go to an office to get this price I might as well not have this sweet spot.)
  • the chart on popular routes for north americans is not very good. Asia-North America is 130k in partners, and on UA/BR it has no surcharges.
  • North America-Europe are 85k/90k in J, which is around industry standard, and with UA the surcharges are very low. However, the insane surcharges on LH group makes it borderline criminal. 1k USD YQ+85k points will likely make your points worth less than 0.5cpm for most journeys
  • North America-Oceania is 205000 is extremely bad, this chart might as well come from the 2050s.
  • Funniest is Asia-Oceania, which is 205000, which I am pretty confident is the world's worst. a 7 hour flight on TG costing 200k? lol sure. Also Europe-Oceania only costs 165000, so I am sure they did not get any education in geography or maths, perhaps both.
  • What made me stop laughing is North America-South America. PTY-BOG in a 737 with barely any time to serve lunch would cost a whopping 140k in J, finally we have an airline that DL can aspire to! This is clearly indicative of not the chart but the company: they do not put effort into their program whatsoever. (this is also seen in the Europe-North America chart, as Europe 1 that is further from North America is priced lower than Europe 2)
  • A lot of the chart just hover between mediocre to bad. While I know TK is no AC, but TK might be one of the worst programs I have ever seen on paper. It has surprisingly few strengths to speak of.
• Change/Cancellation of awards is just 70 bucks, which is not bad at all, finally a firm plus.
• One major downside is the few people I have talked to who have interacted with the program has told me TK is extremely hard to deal with, with some referring to it with words that will get me banned. While I cannot speak on it, but I have been told that CS is atrocious, revenue department is unhinged, and IT is simply nonfunctional often. I want to know from folks who have dealt with TK to let me know if it is true, because on paper AV looks awesome, but in practice there are so many pitfalls it might as well be a scam.
• I see a few groups that may benefit from this promotion clearly:
  • someone based in IST, needless to say many chances to see corners of the world in comfort
  • someone based in a base of airlines that do not charge YQ in certain regions with needs to go to certain regions, such as SFO/DEN/EWR for UA(you can snag relatively okay 130k for last minute flights to Asia), or TPE for BR, BKK for TG (places like ADD for ET is not viable as the insane chart gives you a price of 100k in J for ADD-CAI, while ADD-DXB would be 88k so almost every direction is bad)
  • someone who flies Y a lot and generally do not care for 10+hr in the back of a TK flight to somewhere exotic. This person would need a lot of stamina and free time, as well as desire to travel, and if one aims to go to hard-to-reach countries in Africa/Asia it would be a plus.
• For other groups, I would highly recommend taking a closer look at your travel patterns and evaluate your most common routes and regions, and carefully think if the investment is worth your time. If you are based in SZX and wish to go to SYD/AKL often, this program is NOT for you. If you can avoid the many pitfalls in the charts and are willing to position a lot for flights, maybe this can be worth it.

Overall, I as a conservative would value TK miles at 0.6cpm on paper, and if the bad CS is true, I would turn it down to 0.5cpm, and if one is super conservative or simply do not like dealing with a bad system, I would say it may be worth 0.4cpm tops. However, the 1MM miles is still worth around 5k USD for me, which can be an okay return on investment. While SK was a slam dunk for me (ROI is insane, just flew 8hr on SK J's throne seat for 37.5k miles lol), this one has got me hesitating. I would contemplate in the showers for a few more days before I decide since I do not have as much time as November 2024.
Feel free to provide more information about sweet spots/ticketing/CS or others, I would happily change any part that is mistaken as I am a freshly minted Miles and Smiles noobie.