Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
After the Middle East, Russia is losing its standing in the Caucasus, reads the headline of the article penned by a prominent Turkish journalist who is an expert on Russian issues. The article is referring to press reports that Armenia and Azerbaijan are close to an agreement on the Zangezur corridor which will also facilitate the signing of a permanent peace agreement between the two neighbors.
The Defense Ministry announced that 12 soldiers died on July 6 from methane gas during a search of a cave previously used as a hospital by the PKK in northern Iraq. Opposition parties called for a parliamentary commission to investigate whether the necessary precautions, including the use of gas masks and detectors, were taken when the soldiers entered the cave, but this proposal was rejected by AKP and MHP votes.
A few days after the new U.S. envoy to Germany took up office in Berlin in 2013, news broke out that Washington had been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone since 2002.
Naci Bostancı is an academic—political scientist, sociologist, and communications scholar. He currently serves as the rector of Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University. But that’s not the whole story. For many years, he was a member of parliament, holding senior roles within the ruling AKP. At one point, he even occupied the position of second-in-command after President Erdoğan within the party hierarchy. In the 2023 elections, he chose not to run again and returned to academia.
In Turkish, çocuk simply means “child” — a small, willful person who believes the world should bend to their will. But in political life, çocuk is more than a noun: it is a litmus test. Unlike evlat, the solemn, Arabic-rooted term for “offspring,” çocuk suggests an individual, complete in themselves, not just a branch on a family tree. No surprise, then, that the AKP prefers evlat — a word that keeps people firmly tethered to family, lineage, and duty.
In Turkish, “normal doğum” refers to vaginal birth. But the term itself is anything but neutral. By naming one method “normal,” it quietly casts others — cesareans in particular — as “abnormal”. For women who undergo C-sections, whether for medical reasons or out of their own choice, the implication is clear: you failed to deliver the “natural” way. In fact, a Health Ministry ran a public ad two years ago that did just that: in a clumsily-shot clip, a baby just delivered by vaginal birth tells the mother that they “succeeded.” The contested term has once again taken center stage — not in a hospital, but on a football pitch.
Two issues will be of priority in Turkish foreign policy in 2025: post-Assad Syria and the war in Ukraine. Both will be closely linked to the policy preferences of the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. As the U.S. leader is expected to stop the war in Ukraine, Turkey will be watching his efforts closely and will seek a role to facilitate a reconciliation between Ukraine and Russia, and between Moscow and the West.
In Turkish, ağır abi, literally “heavy-weight bro”—is not your run-of-the-mill elder sibling. He is a stoic, charismatic figure who commands respect with the mere arch of an eyebrow. He doesn’t talk much; he doesn’t need to. His presence alone does the heavy lifting. And if anyone currently embodies the essence of an ağır abi, it’s Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s inscrutable foreign minister. Fidan, poker-faced and perpetually unruffled, has become the leading man in Turkey’s diplomatic theater, even overshadowing the usual stars, such as President Erdoğan and the minister of defense. He seized center stage after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, stepping up to the podium in Doha with all the composure of a man placing bets in a high-stakes poker game. His words called for an inclusive transition in Syria: “The new administration must be established in an orderly manner. There must never be a desire for revenge. It is time to unite and reconstruct the country.”
Hats off to Yusuf Tekin, Turkey’s controversial education minister, for cramming all of Turkey’s thorny subjects into a single speech and creating a debate that drew in political party leaders, actresses, and laymen. It was a performance to steal the limelight from Trump, let alone Erdoğan himself. The Erzurum-born minister, who launched a controversial new curriculum last year, traveled from Baku to Batman, where he presents his education strategy to a large audience. On Nov. 17, he attended COP29 in Baku, where he explained how environmental awareness was now part of the Turkish education system. His critics would say he referred to the controversial project called CEDES, an acronym for “I protect my environment and claim my values.” The project does have an environmental focus, but it also has a “religious values” component under which local imams and preachers are assigned to each school in the project to provide spiritual guidance for students.