Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş has launched consultations with party group leaders on a proposed commission to address the Kurdish issue, aiming to establish the body before Parliament goes into recess.
A lawsuit seeking to annul the results of the CHP’s 2023 congress—based on allegations that delegates were bribed—has triggered a renewed power struggle between current Chair Özgür Özel and his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
In Turkey, a köprü (bridge) is never just a bridge. This week, the Bosphorus Bridge—officially renamed the “15 July Martyrs Bridge” after the 2016 coup attempt—became a stage for protest. A group of CHP deputies climbed onto the structure and unfurled a massive banner reading: “Free İmamoğlu” right before the CHP leader and his guests from the Socialist International would cross it. The message was direct: release Istanbul’s elected mayor, jailed on charges widely condemned as political. Only a few hours before that, the members of the Socialist International had raised a similar banner in their meeting.
Ali Koç is the president of Fenerbahçe, one of Turkey’s “big three” football clubs, alongside Galatasaray and Beşiktaş. Recently, he was seen eating baklava ahead of Fenerbahçe’s EuroLeague basketball final match in Abu Dhabi. Former minister and current ruling party MP Mustafa Varank was feeding him the baklava, which had been brought from Turkey. Varank said the baklava had been “prayed over,” to which Koç responded with an “amen.” In Turkey, when something is said to be “prayed over,” it means it has been blessed.
As the dust settles from the economic shocks of the pandemic, the Ukraine war, and the breakdown of traditional supply chains, a new global order is taking shape—one where economic policy is no longer just about growth and trade but about power, resilience, and survival. Amid this transformation, Turkey stands at a crossroads: a country historically anchored to the West but increasingly drawn to non-Western alignments, and now forced to choose a direction in a fractured world.
Naci Bostancı is an academic—political scientist, sociologist, and communications scholar. He currently serves as the rector of Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University. But that’s not the whole story. For many years, he was a member of parliament, holding senior roles within the ruling AKP. At one point, he even occupied the position of second-in-command after President Erdoğan within the party hierarchy. In the 2023 elections, he chose not to run again and returned to academia.
Former HDP Co-Chair Mithat Sancar described the government’s “Terror-Free Turkey” initiative as unique, “a process that differs from global conflict resolution practices. If successful, it will enter the world’s academic literature,” he said.
In the 1970s, Turkey was plagued by deadly street clashes that claimed at least 10 lives a day. One of the bloodiest moments came in 1977, when the May Day rally in Istanbul’s Taksim Square turned into a massacre after shots were fired into the crowd, killing over 30 people. The ongoing ban on May Day rallies in Taksim dates back to that tragedy. As the violence escalated, conventional media outlets repeatedly asked, “Where is Turkey heading?” The era came to a close with the military coup of September 12, 1980.
t has been seven months since MHP Chair Devlet Bahçeli extended a hand to DEM Party members, and two months since PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan called on his organization to lay down arms. The PKK, which announced it would comply with the call, made its first request for Öcalan to be allowed to communicate with the organization in order to hold a dissolution congress. However, no concrete progress has been made on this request, which requires government action. This has led some to ask if the process is stalling or whether there is a problem between the AKP and the MHP.
Bülent Arınç. Most recently, he stirred controversy with his criticism of the cancellation of Ekrem İmamoğlu’s diploma and his detention. “Neighborhood” has become a widely used concept that reflects the deep polarization in Turkish politics. There’s an “AKP neighborhood,” we say, and there’s an “opposition neighborhood.” But with his remarks, which carried a tone of self-criticism, Arınç managed to draw a backlash from both his own neighborhood and its direct opposite. For those who know him, Arınç’s remarks came as no surprise. Throughout the AKP’s 23 years in power, he has been one of the few — perhaps the only — figures to voice such open dissent from within. Why? He puts it this way: “I have a certain weight of my own. I’m not like the others.”
“Those trying to undermine ties between Türkiye and the Turkic world through manipulation will not succeed,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said finally, weeks, even months, after four Central Asian Republics accredited ambassadors to Greek Cyprus. While Ankara continues to argue for two separate states to solve the Cyprus issue, it remains unmoved by recent diplomatic setbacks.
In Turkish, “normal doğum” refers to vaginal birth. But the term itself is anything but neutral. By naming one method “normal,” it quietly casts others — cesareans in particular — as “abnormal”. For women who undergo C-sections, whether for medical reasons or out of their own choice, the implication is clear: you failed to deliver the “natural” way. In fact, a Health Ministry ran a public ad two years ago that did just that: in a clumsily-shot clip, a baby just delivered by vaginal birth tells the mother that they “succeeded.” The contested term has once again taken center stage — not in a hospital, but on a football pitch.