Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
The sixth week of the mass corruption trial of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and more than 400 co-defendants produced some of its most dramatic courtroom exchanges. İmamoğlu and the presiding judge continued sharp exchanges while the municipality’s housing company, KİPTAŞ, chair Ali Kurt implicated senior government figures in a land scheme, and the European Court of Human Rights formally demanded answers from Ankara.
The reopening of a six-year-old cold case involving a missing university student has reignited the main opposition’s anger towards Justice Minister Akın Gürlek, as the recent reports show then–Tunceli governor Tuncay Sonel played a critical role in covering up the case of the missing young woman Gülistan Doku.
Turkey will assume command of NATO's Allied Reaction Force starting in 2028, and the TAF plans to increase the number of its commando brigades from 25 to 40 within the next three years.
Turkey launched offshore oil and gas exploration off the eastern coast of Africa, deploying a 7th-generation ultra-deepwater drillship. Simultaneously, Turkish F-16 fighter jets, T-129 attack helicopters, and AS-532 Cougar utility helicopters, and the aircraft performed ceremonial flyovers across Mogadishu.
The TAF is participating in a US-led military exercise in Libya, where Turkey backed the Government of National Accord (GNA) in the west during the civil war. Meanwhile, attention has again focused on the plane crash in which the GNA Chief of Staff Muhammed Ali Ahmed Al Haddad and his delegation died near Ankara on Dec. 23, 2025.
Ankara is happy to see the two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran as a significant first step, but worries it may not hold. The central fear focuses on Israel, which stayed silent through the night of negotiations only to issue a statement on Lebanon afterward.
No legal steps have been taken despite calls across the spectrum for progress in the Kurdish peace process. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and MHP Chair Devlet Bahçeli both called for momentum, and the DEM Party co-chair Bakırhan turned the question back on the government: 'Who exactly are they talking to?'
“The plot of the terror act is amateurish, the implementation is professional,” a terrorism expert told me about the attack that took place in Istanbul on April 7.
“It has been assessed that the life raft, having exited its housing, came into contact with the left tail-fuselage section of the aircraft, causing damage to the aircraft’s horizontal and vertical stabilizers, which may have led to the aircraft’s crash,” a Defense Ministry official said on the C-130 military aircraft that crashed on the Georgia-Azerbaijan border on Nov. 11, 2025.
Blue Homeland-26, one of the Turkish Armed Forces’ most extensive exercises this year, was conducted from April 3 to 9 in the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Eastern Mediterranean, with the participation of 120 ships, 50 aircraft, and 15,000 personnel from the Naval, Land, and Air Force Commands, as well as the Coast Guard Command.
While Iran is extensively using kamikaze UAVs in its attacks in the conflict with Israeli and US forces, STM (Defense Technologies Engineering and Trade Inc.), announced that it had conducted the first test flight of its new long-range kamikaze UAV.
The excessive use of anti-terror laws came under renewed criticism in Geneva as five United Nations special rapporteurs issued a joint statement urging Turkey to stop criminalizing human rights defenders and lawyers.