By Nazlan Ertan
In Turkish, rüzgâr begins as a simple meteorological fact: the wind that sweeps across the Bosphorus, bends Aegean olive trees and makes wildfires spread uncontrollably. Etymologically, it probably blows in from Persian, once meaning “time, fate, weather,” before narrowing into “wind.” But its real life is in metaphor: the wind that shifts fortune, tests patience, topples governments. In a language where song lyricists routinely confide in the breeze, it was only a matter of time before politicians started doing the same.
When Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said recently, with a composure that bordered on ominous, that “the wind will turn” for the Kurds of Syria, he wasn’t discussing weather patterns or romantic dreams. He meant that geopolitical winds — especially U.S. protection for the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led formation entrenched across northern Syria — might not remain steady. Fidan and other Turkish officials often use this kind of phrasing as a hybrid of warning and prophecy, signalling that today’s alignments are not permanent, tomorrow’s alliances not guaranteed, and political barometers can fall quickly in TrumpLand.
WIND BENEATH OUR WINGS
The wind has always had excellent political instincts. It shows up reliably in AKP rhetoric as a declaration of momentum. In the waning days of his tenure, former Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati insisted that “the data are good, the wind is at our back” at a time when Turks struggling with post-pandemic inflation could be forgiven for doubting it. President Erdoğan has used similar lines, saying that “we’ve got the wind at our back” during rally seasons when an air of inevitability — and the impression that international developments were turning in his favor with the reelection of Trump— was politically useful.
Some in his own ecosystem disagreed. Şamil Tayyar, commenting on the Terror-Free Turkey process and warning against over-reliance on Abdullah Öcalan’s role, remarked that “the winds are blowing differently on the ground.” Coming from a loyalist, albeit an estranged one, the line landed precisely because it cut across the party’s preferred narrative of tailwinds and triumph.
WINDS OF CHANGE
Across the aisle, the CHP tends to treat wind not as encouragement but as critique. “The winds of change” blow through analyses of the party’s internal struggles, its generational anxieties, and the cycles of expectation that follow every congress. In May 2022, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, then party chair and later the CHP’s presidential candidate against Erdoğan in 2023, declared that “the winds of change are blowing in Turkey.” They were, but not strongly enough to replace Erdoğan with Kılıçdaroğlu. Within a year, however, those winds inside the party replaced Kılıçdaroğlu with Özgür Özel; an ironic reminder that political winds do not always move in the direction their narrators intend.
YAHYA KEMAL TO KENAN DOĞULU
This split personality of rüzgâr — triumphant on one side, transformative on the other — mirrors its role in Turkish culture. In author Sabahattin Ali’s poem “The Wind,” the speaker appeals to the wind as the only force that would take over the mountains. Romantic poet Yahya Kemal used the wind to summon imperial memory and national longing. Turkish pop, meanwhile, keeps the wind busy escorting lovers away from each other, ferrying secrets, or, in Kenan Doğulu’s self-assured “Rüzgar,” reminding listeners that every age has its ease if one knows how to claim it.
Into this literary and political tradition steps Fidan’s “the wind will turn,” a phrase now circulating alongside Ankara’s recalibration on Syria. As Turkey navigates U.S. entanglements, Israeli ambitions, the SDF’s manoeuvres, and Damascus’ sudden relevance, the wind becomes the perfect metaphor: invisible yet forceful, predictable until it isn’t. Ankara worries that the Terror-Free Turkey process could be blown off course by actors who either misunderstand its terms or hope to manipulate them. Others fear that, as in 2009 and 2015, a promising breeze could veer into a storm.
