Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
Engineers at Turkey's first nuclear power plant have finished a critical test as part of preparations for the launch planned by the end of 2026, the Energy Ministry said. Technicians successfully loaded 163 simulated fuel assemblies into the reactor pressure vessel of the first unit at the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant. The operation is a major milestone in the launch of the country’s first nuclear power facility.
Questions about the future of Turkey-Armenia normalization have grown after Turkish Foreign Ministry removed key wording from its statement on Armenian elections, putting pressure on Armenia rather than also pushing Azerbaijan and it took President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan four days to congratulate the Armenian prime minister on his election win.
The government prepares Blue Homeland bill, the TAF conducted Efes-2026, the Education Ministry used the term the Sea of Islands.
One of the most concrete steps yet in the normalization process between Turkey and Armenia—launched in 2021—has been taken with a move toward direct trade between the two countries. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is heading into a June 7 election widely seen as a vote of confidence on his parallel agendas of steering the country toward the West while pursuing peace with Azerbaijan and normalization with Turkey. Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Öncü Keçeli announced on X on May 13 that bureaucratic preparations for the launch of direct trade between Turkey and Armenia had been completed as of May 11.
From Donald Trump’s perspective, he has just one interlocutor in Turkey: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. No criticism of the United States — no matter how harsh — coming from presidential advisors, the AKP spokesperson, the Foreign Ministry, or the MHP chair matters in the slightest to Trump.
A major arms fair in Istanbul exposed the tension between the Defense Ministry and the Presidency’s Secretariat of Defense Industries.
Turkey wants NATO to address threats from all directions — including from Middle Eastern countries — during the Ankara Summit on July 7-8. 'We are reminded that what happens in the south does not stay in the south,' said Ambassador Mehmet Burçin Gönenli, director general for International Security Affairs at the Foreign Ministry, speaking at the 18th Istanbul Security Conference organized by Başkent University and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
“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.
Ebru Eroğlu, one of five lieutenants expelled from the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) on the grounds of insubordination for raising their swords in the air and chanting the slogan “We are Mustafa Kemal’s soldiers” during the Military Academy’s swearing-in ceremony on August 30, 2024, lost the lawsuit to return to the military she filed against the Defense Ministry.
NATO announced that its assets shot down two ballistic missiles aimed at Turkey in a week, but Iran denied that they had targeted Turkey. Since the Defense Ministry and NATO did not provide information on which region of Iran the ballistic missiles were launched from, the route taken by the missiles and their target became a matter of debate.
The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from the aircraft that crashed near Haymana, Ankara, in late 2025 had been decoded, but it provides information that clashes with the prosecutor’s file and the Interior Ministry’s statement on the lethal crash.
The Family and Social Services Ministry has finalized a draft bill that would impose a ban on social media use for children under the age of 15.