Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held a telephone call with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in an effort to defuse a sharpening diplomatic rift between the historic allies, even as Baku escalated its stance by barring dozens of Turkish figures and initiating criminal proceedings against online critics.
My wicked editor and I have been on the phone constantly the last three days to exchange ideas on just what the word of the year should be. We toyed with “secret witness,” “active repentance” (read ratting out), “strategic autonomy,” “voice of the streets,” “angst,” and “normalization.” Finally, I used a columnist’s initiative and settled for meşruiyet, or legitimacy, over normalleşme/normalization.
In Turkish, casus is the spy who slips through keyholes and whispers down telephone lines. In Ottoman Turkish, the word appears as câsûs, borrowed from Arabic, and, under Sultan Abdülhamid II’s watchful reign, it had a cousin, hafiyye, the “secret investigator” who made surveillance an imperial art.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Russian strikes on Kyiv killed at least 19 people and damaged infrastructure, including a Turkish-owned Bayraktar drone factory.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and French President Emmanuel Macron held a phone call on Aug. 21, their first direct contact since the NATO summit in June. The two leaders discussed Russia’s war in Ukraine, the crisis in Gaza, and bilateral cooperation, with Erdoğan again stressing Ankara’s interest in deepening defense ties with France. Both later shared posts on X, tagging each other in messages that underlined common concerns but also revealed different priorities. On bilateral ties, Erdoğan said Turkey valued closer cooperation with France, particularly in the defense industry, and wanted to keep advancing relations across multiple fields. Ankara has long sought approval from Paris to procure European air-defense systems. A green light for the sale of Eurosam GIE’s SAMP/T could accelerate Turkey’s plan to build its own missile shield, described as a “steel dome,” within two to three years.
A Turkish ambassador serving in a Central Asian country before 2016 was criticized for not showing enough interest in the Gülenists schools. The envoy received several phone calls from AKP officials complaining he was not, for instance, visiting the schools frequently enough.
A few days after the new U.S. envoy to Germany took up office in Berlin in 2013, news broke out that Washington had been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone since 2002.
In Turkish politics, few words are as loaded—or as likely to provoke presidential rage—as “cunta.” From its etymological roots in the Spanish resistance to Napoleonic rule (junta, meaning a council), cunta has acquired a sinister sheen along the way. Today, it conjures images not of patriotic committees, but of tanks on boulevards, generals behind microphones, and constitutions suspended by decree (Bet you’ve heard that last one before). So when CHP Chair Özgür Özel recently accused the ruling bloc of staging a “civilian coup”—sivil darbe—and likened the government's tightening grip to a junta mentality, it landed like a Molotov cocktail in Turkey’s ever-combustible political arena.
The cancellation of the Istanbul mayor’s diploma, followed by his arrest, came two days after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke on the phone with U.S. President Donald Trump. For many, this was not a coincidence. This telephone conversation was underreported, according to Steve Witcoff. “Good news is coming from Turkey,” added Trump’s special envoy on March 22, when thousands had taken to the streets to protest the blatant assault against Turkish democracy.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 12 sent shockwaves throughout Europe. “Everyone was expecting Trump to approach Putin; what shocked Europe was Trump’s positive attitude towards the Russian leader,” a Turkish diplomat told me.