Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
Education Minister Yusuf Tekin, no stranger to controversy, has provoked a backlash after announcing a change to the newly updated national school curriculum that renames the War of Independence.
“Today marks the 111th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. As we honor the 1.5 million Armenians murdered by the Ottoman Empire across modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Armenia, we must refuse to let history repeat itself;” wrote Zohran Mamdani.
Before Twitter, there was the tellal: the Ottoman town crier. Walking and shouting past the wooden houses of the empire, he announced fermans (imperial edicts), grain prices, and fresh recruitments for the wars to come. Among these more theatrical criers was the felaket tellalı—literally, “disaster crier.” Think of him as a roaming mashup of breaking news, folk panic, and your neighbourhood uncle who thinks every cloud means war.
Ankara is often described by those who do not know it well as a grey city. This is unfair, though not entirely mysterious. A city that must constantly perform seriousness is rarely forgiven for having charm. Yet Ankara’s charm is real. It is private, reveals itself slowly, and almost always just outside the official frame. It is a city of dry light, hard hills, old stones, republican geometry, Ottoman shadows, Roman fragments, Seljuk craft and streets that remember more than they are prepared to explain. This is why Ankara deserves a cultural diplomacy route, a way of showing visitors not only what the city proudly displays, but also what it half-remembers, neglects, misnames, hides or leaves to survive behind other buildings.
Sigara (and its unruly cousin, cigara) comes to Turkish via Italian — a linguistic clue that matches the prevailing historical account: tobacco reached the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century through Genoese trade routes, though some credit goes to the British. Origins aside, the word now points to a habit so entrenched it once traveled abroad as cliché: “smoke like a Turk.”
Turkish comedian Tuba Ulu has been detained after a clip from one of her stand-up shows went viral on social media.
In Turkish, zehirlenme or poisoning is one of those words that lands with a sting. Its genealogy stretches back through Ottoman Turkish to Persian zahr (poison), but the word has given birth to colorful idioms: zehir saçmak (to scatter venom), zehir zemberek sözler (barbed words that blister on impact), ağzı zehir gibi (a tongue sharp enough to wound).
In Turkish, casus is the spy who slips through keyholes and whispers down telephone lines. In Ottoman Turkish, the word appears as câsûs, borrowed from Arabic, and, under Sultan Abdülhamid II’s watchful reign, it had a cousin, hafiyye, the “secret investigator” who made surveillance an imperial art.
The word of the week is kedi, or cat, the agile, intuitive feline who is supposed to have nine lives. The Turkish word kedi ultimately goes back to Late Latin cattus (“cat”), with an intermediate form in Byzantine Greek gati (γ α τί, “kitten”) from which it passed into Ottoman Turkish as kedi. So why is it the word of the week? Because of the Istanbul Biennial, the must-see flagship event of the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) that continues until the end of November.
Here at the tail end of the tourist season, the word of the week writes itself: konukseverlik, hospitality, or, in its Ottoman-tinted oldspeak, misafirperverlik. Every guidebook swears Turks are preternaturally welcoming; the national branding machine isn’t shy about it either. Yet while “hospitality” is the country’s trusty calling card, the numbers are more than brochure copy. Turkey received 23.6 million foreign visitors in the first half of 2025, marking an increase of 15.9% year-on-year, as tourism revenues hit a record $24.6 billion. By July, official arrivals had topped 31.2 million, the second-highest January–July tally on record.
Altın varak, the Turkish expression for gold leaf, is what happens when human vanity finds its most delicate expression. The Ottomans used it with flair: laid onto Qur’an illuminations, painted into miniatures, burnished across mosque panels and palace ceilings. It was a craft in which theology, politics, and decoration were rolled into one, performed with fine brushes.
The Eastern Mediterranean has always been shaped by the interplay of northern and southern powers. From the time of the Hittites and Ancient Egyptians to the Ottomans and Mamluks, and through to the present day, control or influence over this region—from Mesopotamia to North Africa—has often rested with one or the other. When Turkey and Egypt were aligned, a degree of order and stability was possible. When they clashed, chaos ensued. History shows us that these two centers of power matter—and they still do today.