In Turkey, a köprü (bridge) is never just a bridge.
This week, the Bosphorus Bridge—officially renamed the “15 July Martyrs Bridge” after the 2016 coup attempt—became a stage for protest. A group of CHP deputies climbed onto the structure and unfurled a massive banner reading: “Free İmamoğlu” right before the CHP leader and his guests from the Socialist International would cross it. The message was direct: release Istanbul’s elected mayor, jailed on charges widely condemned as political. Only a few hours before that, the members of the Socialist International had raised a similar banner in their meeting.
The reaction from pro-government figures was swift and scornful. Columnist Abdülkadir Selvi mocked the scene, likening CHP deputy Mahmut Tanal to a lovesick fool threatening to jump if İmamoğlu wasn’t freed. Tanal fired back, accusing Selvi of acting as a palace propagandist who had “rented out his pen.”
But the spat only underscores the heavy symbolism of “köprü” in Turkish political life. For decades, Turkey has presented itself to the world as a “bridge between East and West”—a geographically strategic, culturally hybrid, and diplomatically indispensable nation. The phrase became a diplomatic reflex, repeated at NATO summits, EU sessions, G20 briefings. But the metaphor often rings hollow.
In foreign policy and PR, “bridge” suggests unity, access, exchange, and even creativity. More often, it masks ambiguity or opportunism. Flexibility becomes vagueness; openness, a lack of direction. In a world increasingly obsessed with walls—Trump’s border politics, Europe’s fortress mentality—the metaphor feels off-key.
At best, it calls to mind Bridge of Spies — Steven Spielberg’s Cold War drama—where East and West meet not to reconcile, but to swap prisoners in silence across a foggy river crossing. The bridge becomes not a place of peace, but a grim choreography.
CROSS OR BURN?
Turkish idioms are more blunt. “Köprüyü geçene kadar ayıya dayı denir”—you call the bear “uncle” until you’ve crossed the bridge. It’s a proverb for pragmatism over principle, beloved in realpolitik. Secularists argue that this was President Erdoğan’s game plan in the early 2000s: to pursue EU reforms, liberal economics, and democratic niceties until power was secured. Then the bear was shown the door.
Sometimes, bridges burn. “O köprü çoktan yıkıldı”—that bridge is long gone. Few examples fit better than Turkey’s frozen EU accession talks. Once the golden path to reform and integration, the road is now littered with mutual distrust and fatigue. The bridge at the end of which Turkey would be a member and hold the rotating presidency of the EU Council? Burnt. What's left is a gravel road of transactional stopovers.
So when protestors take to the Bosphorus Bridge, they aren’t just making a logistical choice. They’re invoking a symbol of unity, fracture, power, and peril. Today, it's a place where peaceful protest counts as provocation, and where Ekrem İmamoğlu’s image is banned from buses, billboards, and, apparently, conversation. One might think he’s been cast as the anti-Christ in a state-sponsored melodrama and anyone who wishes to see him as the next president is a potential criminal.
In short, in Turkey, the bridge remains a threshold. What lies on the other side—connection, collapse, or containment—is never guaranteed.
