By the time you read this article, Turkey’s new envoy to Washington and Paris will have started their first week in their office.Ambassador Murat Mercan has certainly not been met by good news in Washington, as the last couple of days have seen negative developments taking place one after the other. One of them would
The ruling Justice end Party (AKP) will gather on March 24 its general assembly and party congress, a key event in terms of President Tayyip Erdoğan’s political future and its People’s Alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). According to political backstage information, Erdoğan and MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli have discussed scheduling the MHP congresses
The Economic Reform Package was announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on March 12. As an economist who specializes in monetary policy, I found the following statement rather struggling: “We will put the frequently mentioned price stability aside.” This remark can have opposite interpretations: 1) Frequent emphasis on price stability increased our awareness on the
The economic reform package announced by President Tayyip Erdoğan on March 12 compares to the Human Rights Action Plan he announced on March 2 in terms of failing to be convincing about introducing a structural change. If Erdoğan had named the plan he announced on March 2 an Administrative Reform in the Judiciary, it would
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised tax exemption for some 850,000 along with cutting public spending in the Economic Reform Package he announced on March 12, bringing Vice President Fuat Oktay to the top seat of the to-be-founded Economic Coordination Council. “Along with macroeconomic policies, a chain of structural measures and transformation are conditional to continue
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has revealed that Turkey is in diplomatic contact with Egypt to repair ties that were strained since 2013. “Our intelligence, diplomatic and economic cooperation process with Egypt continues. There is no problem. [The contract] is not at the highest level but one level below. What we want is to continue this
Egypt took into account the sensitivities of Turkey in the specifications of its recent tender for hydrocarbon search licenses in the Mediterranean Sea, triggering fresh diplomacy traffic among Athens, Cairo and Ankara.The area of 24 blocks put on tender on Feb. 18 ends on the southern border of the continental shelf declared by Turkey to
Pope Francis’ visit to Iraq on 5-8 March was important both historically and politically as its effects could extend over a long period. This first visit by a Pope to Iraq came at a time when the waters in the Middle East were heating up again. Some commentators argued that the pope also visited Arbil,
İbrahim Kalın, President Tayyip Erdoğan’s spokesperson and chief security and foreign policy advisor, has signaled revision on Turkey’s foreign policy. Such revision seems to be focused on putting relations with the U.S. administration under Joe Biden into the track.So remarks by Kalın during a March 8 interview with Bloomberg on a wide range of issues
Canan Güllü, a prominent Turkish women rights activist, has been granted the “Women of Courage” by the Department of State of the U.S. “Canan has been a steadfast champion of gender equality, working to promote women’s participation in governance, labor force, and education,” the U.S. State Department said in a March 7 social media post