There has of late been a recourse to a soft discourse by the high-level Turkish officials toward the West and the Western institutions in comparison to the past rhetoric. It would be useful to cast light on the background of this softer tone. Undergirding that soft language, the most important one is the fragility of the
Will President Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu’s Jan. 12 meeting with European Ambassadors to Ankara turn into a milestone in EU-Turkey relations? Or will the remarks at that meeting be in vain as the previous ones? Both the course of the developments in Ankara and the talks I had with some of the
Turkey-U.S. Business Council (TAİK) Board of Directors hosted U.S. Ambassador to Ankara, David Satterfield, on Jan. 8 in Istanbul. The purpose of the meeting was to convey the demands of the Turkish companies that do business with the U.S. to Washington via the Embassy before Joe Biden takes over the presidency. The leading demands included
Significant facts about Turkey’s current situation were discussed and key opinions were shared in two important meetings, on Dec. 7 and 8. The first one was the reveal of 2020 Trends Survey of Kadir Has University (KHAS), a study conducted each year. The other was the Turkish Economy in 2021webinar jointly organized by Koç University
In Article 6 of the New Restrictions and Measures Circular (“Circular”) of the Interior Ministry dated Nov. 30 , 2020, which came to the agenda with the announcements reminded that New Year’s parties will not be allowed and that a party will be intervened, events that will cause gathering at homes are not allowed (for
President Tayyip Erdoğan paid a visit to Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli, the election partner of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) at his home. This was the third contact of the leaders of the People’s Alliance in a week. The first meeting was held in the Presidential Palace, before an award
When Saudi Arabia killed the dissident writer Jamal Khashoggi in its İstanbul consulate it, in fact, killed two birds with one stone. Not only the Kingdom silenced a dissident but it gave a message to all the dissidents fleeing Arab dictatorships that they should not feel safe in Turkey. There is a little known or
The appointment of a new rector to Turkey’s Boğaziçi University has driven me to make a reminder that I am not fond of. I have avoided using references to religion or belief in political evaluations for all my life, I find it wrong. I sincerely embrace the principle of secularism in the Constitution, which basically
The full title of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) report is “Polypandemic. Development, Fragility, and Conflict in the Era of Covid-19. The sentence used by MSC Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger in the introduction of the 80-page report released in November 2020 will suffice to explain the new term:• “In a few short months, the coronavirus pandemic
From the perspective of a monetary economist, inflation is always the first item that should be addressed on the way to sustainable growth. Hence my unduly emphasis on price stability. Despite all the tragedy and loss, perhaps one of the few gains in 2020 was to bring the abstract notion of price stability down to