Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Sheibani held separate talks in Ankara with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Chief İbrahim Kalın, focusing heavily on regional security and the integration of Kurdish armed groups into Damascus’ central authority.
The government plans to privatize state-operated highways and bridges under a 25-year transfer of operating rights model, while officials weigh whether to sell the assets as a single bundle or divide them into separate packages.
Photographs from two separate locations in Germany taken in mid February reveal the ambiguous and intriguing position of Turkey in Europe’s geostrategic landscape.
Hearings have begun in a corruption probe involving municipalities run by the main opposition CHP, following investigations launched in March 2025. The case marks the first major trial stemming from the allegations, ahead of a separate prosecution involving Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu that is set to begin on March 9. The CHP’s legal strategy and the court’s approach to the defendants are expected to shape Turkey’s political agenda over the many years the trials are expected to take.
Three seemingly separate stories — a party purge, a criminal network, and a political assassination — are converging into a single story with the ruling alliance partner MHP at its heart.
On Feb. 23, four separate courts in Istanbul and Ankara heard cases involving the CHP congress, corruption claims by businessperson and confessor Aziz İhsan Aktaş, accusations about its provincial chair, and the trial of a party bus driver.
Legal pressure on the main opposition CHP continued as allegations of drug use were expanded to include relatives of Ekrem İmamoğlu’s wife, while prosecutors finalized a separate “political espionage” indictment against the imprisoned presidential candidate. At the same time, an Istanbul court ordered the release of a high-profile mayor held on corruption charges, marking a notable shift in the broader judicial process. As a significant development in the ongoing corruption trials, the court ordered the release of Adana Mayor Zeydan Karalar, who had been in detention since July. Karalar became the first CHP mayor to be freed since the start of the Aziz İhsan Aktaş case on Jan. 27. Eight other employees of several municipalities were also released.
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.
An Ankara court has suspended a 10-day broadcasting blackout imposed on Halk TV, but SZC TV, which received the same penalty, has gone off air after a separate court upheld the sanction.
“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.