Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
To get off the streets in the winter time and have access to food, a homeless man in the Mediterranean resort Alanya insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since he had nowhere to live. The court sent him to prison as he wanted, reportedly not for the first time, while thousands of people try to escape from similar legal cases.
Journalists will take to the streets on Oct. 24 to urge the government to end the detentions, arrests, blockages, access bans and all kinds of pressure on media members as the crackdown escalated after the liquidation of investment funds.
Authorities have ordered an access ban on the X accounts of the left-wing TİP headquarters and its Istanbul branch, the party said on Oct. 14, following thousands of similar bans on the accounts of academics, journalists, websites and associations.
Access to T24, one of Turkey's oldest and biggest independent news websites, was blocked along with thousands of critical X accounts, including that of Turkey in Depth.
After years of demonizing rhetoric against LGBTQ+ people, Turkish authorities launched a nationwide operation named 'My Family Is Safe,' detaining hundreds of people from civil society. The crackdown continued with arrests and access bans targeting dissidents, media outlets and civil society organizations' X accounts, widening to include broader opposition voices who spoke out against the operations. The main charge in the investigation was 'obscenity.'
Montenegro announced that citizens of Turkey, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Belarus will be subject to a new visa requirement as part of the country's accession with the European Union (EU).
Athens has succeeded in blocking Turkey’s access to the Meteor missiles it ordered along with the Typhoons, according to the Greek media.
Foreign investors' confidence in Turkish equities is under mounting pressure as two of the world's leading index providers signaled Istanbul's stock market could face a downgrade. Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) issued another warning regarding investment accessibility and shareholder transparency, announcing it may re-evaluate free-float structures on a company-by-company basis and reclassify certain shareholders as 'non-free float' to address distorted calculations driven by coordinated fund actions.
Hakan Aran, the CEO of Turkey's largest private bank, İşBank, has warned that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face severe difficulties accessing credit, predicting a highly strained second half for 2026.
The government is planning legislation to accelerate court cases, ease access to justice and possibly make radical changes to the appeals system.
The European Union has requested full access to Turkey’s public procurement market as a condition for including Turkish goods under the 'Made in Europe' initiative.
Soon after Akın Gürlek began serving as justice minister, the gloves were taken off in politics with the CHP. One of the newly-promoted prosecutor's first acts was to restrict imprisoned Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu’s access to his lawyers.