Turkish Domestic Politics: Analysis and forecast on all relevant developments and insight about Turkish politics with its repercussions in its neighboring countries
Expectations have been raised for weeks, even months, about Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) congress on March 24th. President and Party leader Tayyip Erdoğan would declare a manifest in the Congress. That would be a strategy for Turkey covering the year 2053; a roadmap for a new Turkey.It was the talk in Ankara
The long-awaited meeting finally took place. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken got together on March 24, in Brussels, the premises of the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting. This meeting constitutes the first high-level face-to-face contact between Turkey and the new US administration. Although all details are not clear yet,
Women in many cities across Turkey took to the streets on March 20 to protest President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decision to retreat from the Istanbul Convention that introduces liabilities to prevent violence against women. In Istanbul, a large group gathered in the district of Kadıköy upon the call of the We Will Stop Femicide Platform
The rumors that Turkey would withdraw from the Istanbul Convention against violence against women intensified late on March 19. Journalists worked until midnight but could get no answers to their questions, a sign that something bad was going on.The presidential decree on the Offical Gazette after midnight confirmed the rumors.But the leaked information did not
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has decided to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, a key safeguard against violence against women.Rights groups and women organizations reacted to the decision published on the Official Gazette in the early hours of March 20 saying that it is a big backstep in protecting women against violence. On the rumors
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dismissed Central Bank Gov. Naci Ağbal, only four months after appointing him as part of a new economy administration that replaced the team of former Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, the president’s son-in-law. Şahap Kavcıoğlu, a former ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lawmaker and former deputy chair of
Both the U.S. and the European Union reacted to Turkey for the lawsuit that seeks closure of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and stripping Haluk Gergeroğlu from his lawmaker status on March 17. Turkish Foreign Ministry response to these reactions did not change: It said they were “intervention to Turkey’s domestic affairs.” However, a Reuters
When Chancellor Angela Merkel uttered her famous refugee crisis mantra in August 2015, “we can do this,” she probably did not imagine that this would cost her a sharp fall in her approval ratings while having the exact opposite effect on the anti-immigration party AfD.At that time, hundreds of thousands of refugees were crossing borders
Both the United States and the European Union have reacted to the revoking of the lawmaker status of a Democratic Peoples’ Party (HDP) deputy and attempts to shut down the party. “We are monitoring the initiation of efforts to dissolve the Peoples’ Democratic Party, a decision that would unduly subvert the will of Turkish voters,
Hours after the removal of one of its MPs, Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu from the parliament on March 17, the Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals filed a lawsuit for the closure of the Kurdish-problem-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). In the indictment he sent to the Constitutional Court, the Chief Prosecutor Bekir Şahin claimed