Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
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.
We’ve borrowed the headline from a famous Turkish pop song of the 1970s, “Çilli Bom Bom.” One verse goes: “Don’t leave today’s work for tomorrow / Seize the moment, don’t hesitate / The world turns fast, life is short / Tomorrow won’t do—it has to be now.” Ekrem İmamoğlu could be said to be “impatient.” Like in the song, he’s in a hurry. But to explain this as a mere character trait would be insufficient. Some attribute his impatience to being from Trabzon — in other words, a typical Black Sea temperament — but geography alone cannot explain it either.
President of the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) İbrahim Hacıosmanoğlu revealed that 371 of the 571 referees officiating in professional matches had betting accounts, and 152 of them were actively placing bets.
The election of Tufan Erhürman as president of Northern Cyprus rekindled hopes for renewed negotiations with the Greek Cypriots.Erhürman’s opening statements — stressing democratic tolerance, representation and the need to reopen talks under UN auspices with political equality as his “red line” — set a constructive tone: “There are no losers in this election. The Turkish Cypriot people won, our children won, our brotherhood won.” Yet those words of unity sit alongside firm warnings: political equality cannot be treated as a bargaining chip, and any new process must have meaningful limits and commitments from the outset.
Training for Syrian military forces by the Turkish Army has begun in accordance with the Joint Training and Advisory MoU signed between the two countries on Aug. 13, the Defense Ministry announced.
Following lengthy negotiations, an agreement for Turkey to procure 20 Eurofighter Typhoon Tranche 4 fighter jets from the UK was signed in Ankara on Oct. 27. Turkey will increase the number of aircraft in its Eurofighter fleet to 44 by procuring 12 second-hand Typhoons each from Qatar and Oman. The $10.7 billion (£8 billion) payment to the U.K. under the agreement has become a subject of debate in Turkish domestic politics, as the details of the package were not announced.
Tufan Erhürman became the new president of Northern Cyprus in Sunday’s election—winning twice as many votes as incumbent Ersin Tatar. Erhürman is a familiar name among Turkish Cypriots but not to the Turkish public. A seasoned politician who has served both as prime minister and party leader, he joins a line of Cypriot leaders whose names rarely surface in Turkey outside moments of crisis. Yet, like some of his predecessors, Mehmet Ali Talat and Mustafa Akıncı—both presidents from the same social-democratic tradition—his story also crosses paths with Ankara’s academic and political world.
Turkish democracy is the casualty of Europe’s rediscovery of Turkey’s strategic value. To better understand the context of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s visit to Ankara next week, one has to go back to the end of the Cold War. Whereas European countries have benefited from the peace dividend, the contrary happened for Turkey in the aftermath of the fall of the Iron Curtain. After enjoying the relative stability of the bipolar order of the Cold War era, Turkey found itself in the midst of several conflict zones. While most European countries downsized their defense budgets, Turkey had no such luxury. The fight against separatist terrorism, the turbulence created by the Gulf War, and regional conflicts like the ones in the Caucasus dictated the maintenance of a big and well-equipped army.
The term of the presidential motion authorizing the deployment of Turkish Armed Forces in Iraq and Syria to combat terrorist organizations and the acceptance of foreign troops in Turkey has been extended for another three years.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan concluded a three-day tour of the Gulf region on Oct. 23, with official visits to Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, amid ongoing international efforts to continue the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. While Gaza and Syria reportedly dominated the private discussions, official statements from the Turkish Presidency did not reference these issues.
The State Theaters have recently come under the spotlight due to a protest. The incident took place during the traditional Afife Jale Awards ceremony. Who was Afife Jale? In the early 20th century, when Istanbul was still under occupation, she became the first Turkish woman to appear on stage. The awards are presented every year in her memory.
During a party debate, veteran AKP politician Bülent Arınç once distinguished himself from his comrades by declaring, “I have a certain weight of my own.” Though Arınç’s own weight has faded over the past decade, if one were to search for true “political weight” in today’s Turkey, one name stands out above all: Devlet Bahçeli. Having led the MHP for 28 years, Bahçeli has always been a force shaping Turkish politics—but in recent years, as part of the ruling People’s Alliance, he has become almost the determining factor in many critical decisions.