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RAKI AND DIPLOMACY OF WHO “WE” ARE
Guest Voices Nov 28, 2025

RAKI AND DIPLOMACY OF WHO “WE” ARE

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.

Editorial Team
İYİ PARTY CONDEMNS ÖCALAN TALKS
Inside Turkey Nov 28, 2025

İYİ PARTY CONDEMNS ÖCALAN TALKS

İYİ Party Chair Müsavat Dervişoğlu condemned the parliamentary visit to İmralı, calling it a “national disgrace” and asserting that there is no statute of limitations for what he described as betrayal. İYİ Party deputy Alpaslan Yüce resigned from his party, saying it had abandoned its founding centrist ideals.

Editorial Team
DP PULLS OUT OF COMMISSION, PROTESTS İMRALI VISIT
Inside Turkey Nov 28, 2025

DP PULLS OUT OF COMMISSION, PROTESTS İMRALI VISIT

Democrat Party (DP) Izmir Deputy Haydar Altıntaş has announced the party's withdrawal from the National Solidarity, Brotherhood, and Democracy Commission, citing objections to the delegation’s visit to İmralı where PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan has been jailed since 1999.

Editorial Team
DEMİRTAŞ: “NO ONE SPEAKS FOR ME”
Inside Turkey Nov 21, 2025

DEMİRTAŞ: “NO ONE SPEAKS FOR ME”

Jailed former HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş rejected remarks by former Parliament Speaker Bülent Arınç suggesting Demirtaş wished to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and tell him he held no resentment. After a visit to Edirne Prison, Arınç said Demirtaş wanted to tell Erdoğan, “I hold no grudge against you.” Demirtaş responded with a handwritten note, saying he never expressed such a thought. “What troubles me most is being associated with words and ideas I never hinted at,” he wrote.

Editorial Team
DEMİRTAŞ, STRASBOURG, AND THE NEVER-ENDING POLITICAL DRAMA SERIES
Guest Voices Nov 13, 2025

DEMİRTAŞ, STRASBOURG, AND THE NEVER-ENDING POLITICAL DRAMA SERIES

Selahattin Demirtaş has long been more than a defendant; he is a barometer of how politics manages law, another act in a long-running political drama in Turkey. This is not a scripted series that keeps millions guessing on Thursday nights; it is a real-world production about the country’s future.

Guest Voices
FORMER HDP MPS RELEASED
Inside Turkey Nov 7, 2025

FORMER HDP MPS RELEASED

As expectations grow for the release of former HDP Co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, former HDP MPs Semra Güzel and Hüda Kaya have been released, taking into account the length of their detention.

Editorial Team
A NEW TONE, OLD REALITIES, AND A HARD ROAD AHEAD IN CYPRUS
Guest Voices Oct 31, 2025

A NEW TONE, OLD REALITIES, AND A HARD ROAD AHEAD IN CYPRUS

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.

Guest Voices
THE THIRD ‘HOCAM’ ERA IN NORTHERN CYPRUS
Portrait of the Week Oct 24, 2025

THE THIRD ‘HOCAM’ ERA IN NORTHERN CYPRUS

Tufan Erhürman became the new president of Northern Cyprus in Sunday’s election—winning twice as many votes as incumbent Ersin Tatar. Erhürman is a familiar name among Turkish Cypriots but not to the Turkish public. A seasoned politician who has served both as prime minister and party leader, he joins a line of Cypriot leaders whose names rarely surface in Turkey outside moments of crisis. Yet, like some of his predecessors, Mehmet Ali Talat and Mustafa Akıncı—both presidents from the same social-democratic tradition—his story also crosses paths with Ankara’s academic and political world.

Anonymous
BERLIN’S DEFENSE TURN WARMS TIES WITH ANKARA, COOLS CONCERN FOR DEMOCRACY
Deciphering Turkish Diplomacy Oct 24, 2025

BERLIN’S DEFENSE TURN WARMS TIES WITH ANKARA, COOLS CONCERN FOR DEMOCRACY

Turkish democracy is the casualty of Europe’s rediscovery of Turkey’s strategic value. To better understand the context of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s visit to Ankara next week, one has to go back to the end of the Cold War. Whereas European countries have benefited from the peace dividend, the contrary happened for Turkey in the aftermath of the fall of the Iron Curtain. After enjoying the relative stability of the bipolar order of the Cold War era, Turkey found itself in the midst of several conflict zones. While most European countries downsized their defense budgets, Turkey had no such luxury. The fight against separatist terrorism, the turbulence created by the Gulf War, and regional conflicts like the ones in the Caucasus dictated the maintenance of a big and well-equipped army.

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