Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
“We certainly have a problem and it is clear we need to be in dialogue with Turkey to solve it,” a high-level German official told me when asked about news stories that Ankara and Berlin reached an understanding to send Turkish illegal migrants back to Turkey. “We told the Germans we are ready to work with them but we have not reached an agreement,” told me a Turkish official.
“When Turkish politics become too repetitive, I turn to the country’s art scene,” a European diplomat told me three years ago. “There is certainly more variety and more originality.” This year’s tension-wrought political rentrée, where debates revolved around “did they rise or did they not, for the president,” somehow made me follow her advice: When politics go wrong, seek consolation in art and culture.
Sucuk (noun- pronounced suˈdʒuk): semi-dried beef-based sausage mixed with salt, pepper, garlic, sumac, and other spices made by a dry-curing process. In Turkey, the cities of Kayseri and Afyon battle over which has the better sucuk. It is known as sudzhuk in Bulgaria and Russia, suxhuk in Albania, and soutzouki in Greece.
In case you have yet to notice, the Presidential Couple loves marriage, family, and many children. This love, of course, is echoed in policy-making. Since the AKP came to power, the government has introduced a series of measures to encourage young people to get married, including subsidies and housing for university students who want to get married while still at school and “marriage credits,” long-term, low-interest loans for those between 18 and 30.
Lokma (noun): Literally translated as “morsel,” lokma is a fried sweet dough covered in syrup. Part of Turkey’s colossal street food culture, its shape, size, and sweetness change according to the region. Izmirians maintain that it has to have a hole in the middle, whereas Istanbuliots say it should be in the shape and size of a dove’s egg. People of Gaziantep, whose Unesco-registered cuisine is on festival mode until Sept. 22, call it pisik daşşaa (“cat’s balls” in the local accent) and sprinkle it with crushed pistachios. Greeks have loukoumades, which they serve with honey and heated arguments on its Greek origins. In Turkey, when a loved one dies, people distribute lokma in their sweet memory, when a small lokma-van pulls on the street in front of the family home and distributes little cartoon cups of half a dozen lokmas to neighbors and passers-by.
When Hakan Fidan met the new recruits who passed the Foreign Ministry’s examinations in February, he told them not to marry foreigners. He has made his objections known since the first day he came to office in June 2023, complaining that the rate of Turkish diplomats married to a foreign national had reached 20 percent. He also made clear that while those already married to foreigners would not be discriminated against, from now on those who would marry foreigners would not be appointed to critical positions.
For the past week, many Turks have been uneasily following the unfolding of the murder of an eight-year-old girl at a southeastern village and its tangle of feudal ties, political influence and an unholy conspiracy of silence that may well belong to an Almodovar film.