Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
Before Twitter, there was the tellal: the Ottoman town crier. Walking and shouting past the wooden houses of the empire, he announced fermans (imperial edicts), grain prices, and fresh recruitments for the wars to come. Among these more theatrical criers was the felaket tellalı—literally, “disaster crier.” Think of him as a roaming mashup of breaking news, folk panic, and your neighbourhood uncle who thinks every cloud means war.
Queen Mathilde is leading the Belgian Economic Mission to Turkey to bolster bilateral ties — but she will not be traveling to the capital, Ankara.
The European Union’s push to conclude free trade agreements (FTAs) is reshaping the economic landscape around its periphery. Chief among these is the long-negotiated EU–Mercosur Trade Agreement, alongside accelerating talks with India. While these agreements are formally bilateral between the EU and third parties, their implications extend well beyond signatories. For Turkey, which is bound to the EU through a customs union covering industrial goods, these deals carry direct consequences—despite Ankara not being a negotiating party.
When war and peace are mentioned, the first person that comes to mind is the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and his novel of the same title, a cornerstone of world literature. In this work, Tolstoy renders war and peace with striking realism. World history, after all, is also a history of wars — and, inevitably, a history of peace.
As Turkey prepares to purchase 12 second-hand Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets from Qatar, a series of defense industry cooperation agreements were signed between the two countries, further deepening bilateral relations.
Tufan Erhürman, the newly elected president of Northern Cyprus, voiced guarded expectations ahead of his first trilateral meeting on Dec. 11 with Greek Cypriot figure Nikos Christodoulides and UN envoy María Ángela Holguín. Speaking to Turkish journalists, Erhürman said that shifting regional dynamics and a long record of unsuccessful rounds make a rapid return to substantive talks unrealistic — particularly without agreed-upon parameters.
A wedding portrayed the complexity and the changing dynamics of political relations in Turkish politics. Veteran politician Mehmet Sevigen, who was expelled from the CHP in 2021 and appears on TV screens as a sharp commentator against the CHP under Özgür Özel, managed to unite a range of opponents at his son’s wedding.
Turkey’s once-mighty dams are losing their power — literally. Electricity generation from the country’s largest hydro plants has fallen by a quarter in the past three decades, a drop experts link to worsening drought and years of poor planning.
Veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Türk of the DEM Party has been acquitted of charges of promoting terrorist propaganda over a 2011 speech in Siirt, which had formed the legal basis for his replacement by a trustee as mayor of Mardin.
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.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and French President Emmanuel Macron held a phone call on Aug. 21, their first direct contact since the NATO summit in June. The two leaders discussed Russia’s war in Ukraine, the crisis in Gaza, and bilateral cooperation, with Erdoğan again stressing Ankara’s interest in deepening defense ties with France. Both later shared posts on X, tagging each other in messages that underlined common concerns but also revealed different priorities. On bilateral ties, Erdoğan said Turkey valued closer cooperation with France, particularly in the defense industry, and wanted to keep advancing relations across multiple fields. Ankara has long sought approval from Paris to procure European air-defense systems. A green light for the sale of Eurosam GIE’s SAMP/T could accelerate Turkey’s plan to build its own missile shield, described as a “steel dome,” within two to three years.
In Turkish, the term for ambassador has undergone a transformation as sweeping as the empire it once served. The old-fashioned word was “Sefir,” from the Arabic s‑f‑r root meaning “to bear a message,” and the highest rank was Sefir‑i Kebir—the Grand Envoy—complete with embroidered robes and horse-led fanfare. Today, the bureaucratic “Büyükelçi” literally means “great envoy,” yet, put in plain Turkish, it feels a little less illustrious.