Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
The post–Second World War international order is no longer being reformed. It is being deliberately and systematically dismantled. The assumption that today’s turbulence represents a temporary deviation from a rules-based system misses a more uncomfortable reality: the system itself is being hollowed out by its original architects.
The “new peace process” began with convention-shattering moves such as granting the “right to hope” to PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and, after 15 months, is now not even back where it started. In fact, it has probably moved backward.
A war of words broke out in the pro-government media, as prominent figures from the Demirören Group, which owns Hürriyet and CNN Türk, started questioning why they have been speaking on behalf of the ruling AKP.
As the Peace Commission moves toward drafting its final document — and as legislation looms on the horizon — the key question is whether parliament can transform overlapping objectives into a shared roadmap, or whether the process will once again stall at the fault line between security-first sequencing and demands for democratic and political normalization.
Russian and Ukrainian envoys in Ankara were warned not to wage their war in Turkish territory. The warning came as tensions in the Black Sea in the first half of December escalated to fresh peaks in the four-year-old war.
The newly released U.S. Strategic Security paper signals the most significant shift in American grand strategy since the end of the Second World War. Its defining features are the explicit identification of China as a peer competitor, the reaffirmation of Russia as a principal adversary, and—perhaps most striking—the retreat from the ideological mission that once sustained “the West” as a political and civilizational project.
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.
While Turkey and Iran were on opposite sides during the Syrian civil war, Israel's hostility to the new regime in Damascus appears to be pushing Ankara and Tehran closer as both define Israel as a threat to Syria’s stability.
Ukrainian naval drones struck two ships alleged to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” in the Black Sea off the Turkish coast, increasing tension in the shared sea even as the combatants pursue renewed peace talks. The Sea Baby drones hit the oil tankers MT Kairos and MT Virat on Nov. 28. Russia has used hundreds of tankers known as the “shadow fleet” to evade Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine, delivering millions of barrels of oil to buyers in breach of those restrictions.
When basketball player Alperen Şengün told an international audience that “rakı is our national drink,” he walked straight into a long domestic war over who is allowed to say “we” in Turkey. The outrage from certain commentators, demanding that the 23-year-old Houston Rockets center be punished for “promoting alcohol,” was predictable, not because of rakı itself, but because symbolic ownership of the drink has become a proxy for symbolic ownership of the nation.
The election of Tufan Erhürman as president of Northern Cyprus rekindled hopes for renewed negotiations with the Greek Cypriots.Erhürman’s opening statements — stressing democratic tolerance, representation and the need to reopen talks under UN auspices with political equality as his “red line” — set a constructive tone: “There are no losers in this election. The Turkish Cypriot people won, our children won, our brotherhood won.” Yet those words of unity sit alongside firm warnings: political equality cannot be treated as a bargaining chip, and any new process must have meaningful limits and commitments from the outset.
With the “change” endorsement from Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Özgür Özel became CHP chair and will mark his second year in office in just ten days. Many see this as the “most difficult two years” in the party’s 102-year history, as policies were revised and key positions changed. While also battling lawsuits to annul its congress and ongoing operations against municipalities, the CHP seems poised to fight on new fronts—starting with the possible lifting of parliamentary immunities—as the election calendar nears.