Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
“Flowers bloom on the mountains of Izmir / The golden sun scatters gold thread there / The routed enemies all flee like the wind / Long live Mustafa Kemal Pasha, long live! Your name will be inscribed on a jeweled stone.”
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.
In Turkish, rüzgâr begins as a simple meteorological fact: the wind that sweeps across the Bosphorus, bends Aegean olive trees and makes wildfires spread uncontrollably. Etymologically, it probably blows in from Persian, once meaning “time, fate, weather,” before narrowing into “wind.” But its real life is in metaphor: the wind that shifts fortune, tests patience, topples governments. In a language where song lyricists routinely confide in the breeze, it was only a matter of time before politicians started doing the same.
So our word of the week is soygun, robbery - as in art heist. On a quiet Sunday morning in Paris, the world’s most visited museum turned into a crime scene. In under eight minutes, thieves hit the Louvre’s Galerie d’Apollon (the home of France’s Crown Jewels) and fled with royal pieces tied to Empresses Marie-Louise and Eugénie, and Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense. Investigators say the crew used a lift to breach an upper window. Ministers Rachida Dati and Laurent Nuñez confirmed that the alarm tripped and police arrived within minutes. The symbolism stings more than the price tag. (Think eight figures.)
Serdar Öktem, a lawyer affiliated with the MHP and a defendant in the 2022 assassination case of former Grey Wolves leader Sinan Ateş, died after being shot outside his office by masked assailants on Oct. 6. The attackers opened fire while Öktem was inside his car in front of his office on Büyükdere Avenue in Istanbul’s Zincirlikuyu district. Surveillance video showed six bullet holes in the window of his car. Despite emergency medical intervention, Öktem succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.