Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
For the first time in Turkish history, a former prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, was summoned for criticizing the president and then he invited President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to his son’s wedding ceremony.
In Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, the American president interrupts a scuffle between General Buck Turgidson and the Soviet ambassador with an appeal to institutional dignity. “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.”
International outrage erupted following the state-supported funeral ceremony for convicted Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic in Serbia. Critics worldwide denounced the honors as an attempt to glorify a perpetrator of genocide. Turkey joined the global backlash on Sept. 8, a day after the ceremony.
Joel Lion, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi and close associate of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, presented his credentials in Ankara on Sept. 9 and left the same day after attending a US Independence Day reception.
Thirteen more Istanbul Municipality staff were detained on Sept. 3, as prosecutors widened their operation against the metropolitan authority.
The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation into former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, 67, for allegedly insulting the president in a video recorded five years ago but circulated recently on social media.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek and signaled a new nuclear partnership as the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant nears operations.
In Pirates of the Caribbean, cornered by the Black Pearl, Elizabeth Swann invokes “parley” under the Pirata Codex. Barbossa, with the convenience of a man who commands the only ship in sight, decides the Code is not quite law. Closer, he explains, to guidance.
Syria's Defense Ministry used drones to project a map of Syria — including the Golan Heights — into the sky above Abu Duhur Military Airbase, a facility in the Idlib countryside that Israel has struck many times.
Mining workers demonstrating in Ankara against Yıldızlar SSS Holding ended their 17-day protest outside the Energy Ministry after receiving the first installment of their back pay.
Turkish authorities have closed a brief investigation into British economist Timothy Ash over comments likening President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Authorities have exhumed the body of a religious leader who died a decade ago as part of wide-ranging judicial investigations into two Islamic orders with poor relations with the government.