Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
The government is seeking to create the impression that it is cutting ties with those involved in the stock market scandal and has launched an investigation, announcing that up to a million liras of losses will be repaid to investors soon. But the opposition calls it the 'corruption of the century' and is seeking a parliamentary inquiry.
Turkish exporters face market loss and price disruption as China redirects $350 billion in production away from the US toward markets where Turkish goods are sold, business leaders warned.
In football, the transfer window closed Sept. 4. But in politics, it remains wide open as the AKP presses on with a campaign of seduction and coercion unprecedented in Turkish political history.
Suffering from a loss of competitiveness due to the weak lira and high inflation, the head of the Istanbul Apparel Exporters Association (IHKIB) has requested a three-year support program to save the ready-to-wear sector.
This week, Turkish cinema lost the last of its truly beloved leading men. If only it had been a loss for cinema alone. All of Turkey lost Kadir İnanır.
Marjane Satrapi's family said she died of sadness brought on by a profound sense of loss. It is difficult to think of Satrapi without the vocabulary of loss. What she drew, again and again, was loss, the loss of childhood, country, language and return. In the end, according to those closest to her, another loss, the love of her life, silenced her.
All deaths are tragic. They touch a family, a circle of friends, a silence suddenly too large for the room. But some deaths pass beyond the private wound and enter the deeper chambers of public life. They reveal the loss not only of a person, but of a habit of mind, a manner of thinking, a discipline of attention, a way of teaching a society to recognise itself. The death of Professor İlber Ortaylı feels like that kind of loss.
As negotiations between Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) stalled following the loss of two Aleppo neighborhoods from its control, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the Syrian government would take steps to exercise its sovereign right to ensure unity and order within the country if needed.
Following the cancellation on Sept. 2 of the CHP Istanbul Provincial Congress, losses on the Istanbul Stock Exchange exceeded 5% within the day. The banking index dropped by more than 8% before rebounding.
Twelve Turkish soldiers died from gas exposure in a PKK-used cave in northern Iraq on July 6, and two more from excessive fluid loss in Hatay on July 25, but key questions about both incidents remain unanswered.
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.