Journalist-Writer
I congratulate April 23 National Sovereignty and Children’s Day “against all odds.”I say odds because President Tayyip Erdoğan did not use the surname of Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the first president of the country, in his message celebrating the “biggest day of the nation.” (Atatürk translates as “Father of Turks). I do
The last strike that led President Tayyip Erdoğan to fire Trade Minister Ruhsar Pekcan with a late-night decree in the early hours of April 21 should be her acceptance of selling disinfection goods to the ministry by her husband’s company on the grounds of “below market price.” Pekcan was not a prominent minister in the
The lawyers of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) former co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş held an online press conference on April 18 over the “Kobani incidents case” that will start to be heard in Ankara on April 26. In the case to be held in Ankara’s 22nd High Criminal Court, 108 defendants will be tried together with Demirtaş
The Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) chair Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu posted a Twitter message on April 15 in a rare opposition to a government decision despite his support for the government.“Problems of our companies have increased due to the pandemic. First of all, Shorter Employment Allowance needs to be restored,” said the
The Ankara contacts of the Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias on April 15 ended in a scandalous way. When Dendias brought up heavy accusations against Turkey during a joint press conference, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu clapped back and we witnessed a duel of words live. Watching the video of this press conference would help
The debate that was launched after 104 retired admirals made a statement for the stay of the 1936 Montereux Convention on sovereign rights of the straits, has faded with the release of 10 detained former military men. Had Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning to President Tayyip Erdoğan “not to violate Montreux” any part in this?
Ankara was happy with a good meeting with Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Mohammed Dbeibeh but the bad news came from Russia. The first thing that Libya would remind Turkish citizens nowadays might be President Tayyip Erdoğan’s 150,000 doses of vaccine to the North African country at a time when the daily new Covid-19 cases
Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu appeared last week on Global TV, with host Buket Aydın, who had ironically laughed during an interview on Kanal D, another private broadcaster, in 2019 when the main opposition leader claimed that his party would win the mayor seats in major big cities. The CHP actually won the
If the Directorate of Communications of the Turkish Presidency had remained the sole source of the April 9 phone call between President Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, then we would have been contented with a two-sentence statement. The Turkish Presidency announced that the two leaders contacted, adding that they talked about “issues that
A joint statement of 126 retired ambassadors, a previously published text that opposed the possibility of annulment of the 1936 Montreux Convention on the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, popped up in Turkey’s agenda. Then came the joint declaration of 103 retired admirals. The government did not respond strongly to the statement of the retired ambassadors.