Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
Parliament has passed sweeping tax exemption measures for goods, services, and imports tied to the country's hosting of the 31st Conference of the Parties (COP31) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, scheduled to take place in Antalya from November 9–20.
A district governor in Ankara has been surprisingly reassigned following his religious references, political posturing against CHP members, and social media arguments. Meanwhile, the President of the Constitutional Court addressed jurists with similar religious references while he was demanding they ensure justice through religious frameworks.
A series of aircraft crashes related to the Turkish Armed Forces over the past six months has sparked debate over whether there was external interference.
As Hüsamettin Cindoruk and Yalçın Küçük passed away within days of each other, this is an attempt to sketch their portraits in a single piece. They were close in age. While they may have moved in different political lanes, they still shared firsthand experience of more than sixty years of this country’s political life.
“The opposition called for a quorum check, and when the required majority was not met, parliament was adjourned.” In recent months, this recurring news in parliament is not merely a simple quorum crisis. Behind it lie both structural problems inherent in the presidential system and the power struggle between the government and the opposition, spilling into parliamentary proceedings.
Foreign policy has always liked theater, costumes and masks. Peace conferences, state visits, summit handshakes, seating plans, flags, solemn declarations. All belong to the choreography of international life.
The planned meeting of the Turkish–Greek High-Level Cooperation Council (HLC) in Ankara on February 11 comes when the calm in relations between Ankara and Athens conceals numerous fragilities. That’s just one reason why the meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is unlikely to produce a breakthrough. Rather, the meeting aims to keep communication channels open while both sides pursue sharply divergent agendas in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
The planned meeting of the Turkish–Greek High-Level Cooperation Council (HLC) in Ankara Feb. 9–13 comes when the calm in relations between Ankara and Athens conceals numerous fragilities.
When basketball player Alperen Şengün told an international audience that “rakı is our national drink,” he walked straight into a long domestic war over who is allowed to say “we” in Turkey. The outrage from certain commentators, demanding that the 23-year-old Houston Rockets center be punished for “promoting alcohol,” was predictable, not because of rakı itself, but because symbolic ownership of the drink has become a proxy for symbolic ownership of the nation.
Months of competition between Turkey and Australia has come to an end, as Turkey became next year’s host of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP31). Australia will chair the summit, while discussions will focus on the Pacific, according to the compromise reached on Nov. 19, hours before the end of this year's summit in Brazil.
Excluding their early courtship phase, the AKP and MHP have now completed seven years of formal partnership. In their partnership, branded the “People’s Alliance,” the two parties have gone through five electoral contests — one referendum, two general elections, and two local elections. Like any relationship, this one has had its ups and downs. Many of the rifts that the public interpreted as “cracks” or “crises” within the alliance were quickly smoothed over through mutual statements. But, the crisis of the past two weeks has been among the deepest since the alliance was formed.
Nearly a decade after the migration deal that was signed between the EU and Turkey under the leadership of Germany, the arrangement that succeeded in stopping migrants entering Europe via Turkey remains the backbone of the transactional relationship between Ankara and Berlin. However, although Turkey continues to be seen as a buffer zone stopping the migration flows, there is also a renewed discovery among European capitals of the country’s value as a strategic asset.