Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders met under the facilitation of United Nations Secretary-General’s personal envoy, María Angela Holguín Cuéllar, on Dec. 11. Tufan Erhürman and Nikos Christodoulides reportedly agreed to expedite a series of confidence-building measures. Talks to resolve the decadeslong Cyprus issue are unlikely to gain traction before mid-2026, as both the north and south prepare for critical elections.
Sözcü TV, which began broadcasting on March 1, 2023, has undergone a major management overhaul that resulted in a wave of layoffs and raised questions about a broader editorial shift at one of Turkey’s key opposition channels.
The collapse of the half-century-long Assad dynasty following the flight of Bashar Assad to Russia on Dec. 8, 2024 overjoyed pro-government circles here. Some even started to mention Aleppo as Turkey’s 82nd province, while the shares of cement and construction companies surged on the stock exchange.
Furkan Karabay, 29, is a journalist and has been detained three times in the past two years. On the 201st day of his latest imprisonment, he was sentenced but released. He refused to present a defense, tearing up the indictment in the courtroom.
Under the agreement signed between Turkey and the U.K., the £5.4 billion payment to the Eurofighter consortium for 20 Typhoon fighter jets was not included in either the Defense Ministry’s budget or the Defense Industry Presidency's (SSB) budget. The Defense Industry Support Fund (SSDF) can be used as a source of funding for this project, but the cost of the Typhoons is approximately double the annual amount transferred to the fund from taxes collected by the state.
In 2020, the CHP held a “Power Congress” under Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership; five years later, the party is heading into another congress — this time under the leadership of Özgür Özel and with the slogan “Now Is the Time for Power.” After that congress, held with the claim that the party was on its way to power, Kılıçdaroğlu, now 76, not only lost the 2023 elections but also the CHP chairmanship. Now Özel, in only his third year as a chair at 51, is convening a congress with his own claim to power.
The Defense Ministry’s budget, 623.9 billion lira in 2025, is set to increase 31.9% to 822.9 billion lira in 2026, according to figures released during parliamentary budget talks Nov. 26. This allocation does not cover Turkey’s latest procurement of Eurofighters.
A wedding portrayed the complexity and the changing dynamics of political relations in Turkish politics. Veteran politician Mehmet Sevigen, who was expelled from the CHP in 2021 and appears on TV screens as a sharp commentator against the CHP under Özgür Özel, managed to unite a range of opponents at his son’s wedding.
Turkey will test the proposed “basic citizenship income” pilot program, first announced by the governing AKP in 2023.
Islamist YRP Chair Fatih Erbakan has promised to repeal Law 6284, the main legal safeguard protecting women from violence and the only remaining protection after Turkey withdrew from the landmark Istanbul Convention in 2021.
In early November 2025, two gatherings revealed the evolving architecture of Eurasian energy and resource corridors: the “3+1” Energy Ministerial in Athens, bringing together Greece, Cyprus, Israel, and the United States, and the C5+1 Summit in Washington between the United States and the five Central Asian republics—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
Turkey’s Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) released new data covering the first nine months of 2025, revealing the country’s debt landscape by province. The capital, Ankara, recorded the highest total credit debt, while the central Anatolian province of Karaman had the largest share of citizens unable to repay their loans and facing collection proceedings.