According to President Tayyip Erdoğan’s statement, 350,000 people attended the Friday prayer at the Hagia Sophia’s reopening as a mosque on July 24. He was the one reading the Fatiha surah, the opening verses of Muslims’ holy book Quran to the attendees. He said that “a nation’s decades-long longing has subsided”. He also granted due

Every day thousands of social media tribunals are established on Turkish social media outlets. Millions of people are looking for justice on social media courtrooms.  There are many reasons for this. First of all, if a hashtag becomes a trending topic and manages to stay there for a long time, it influences public opinion. Hashtags,

July 21, 2020. Women were facing police brutality on the streets while protesting the murder of the university student Pınar Gültekin, as a recent chain of violence against women. Meanwhile, President Erdoğan was speaking at the assessment meeting of the first two years of the Presidential System of Government at his Presidential Complex at Beştepe,

A total of 101 Turkish intellectuals, politicians, journalists and writers, “the grey-haired elders” as they name themselves, have made a call to the youth of the country and the opposition to unite for rights and freedoms “by joining around fundamental democratic principles.” The “the grey-haired elders” criticized the government in a statement on July 21

On the evening of July 16, the Turkish Grand National Assembly condemned Armenia for the attacks on the border with Azerbaijan with the joint statement of four-party groups and declared it was with Azerbaijan. A few hours ago, National Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, during a meeting with Azerbaijani Deputy Minister of Defense and Commander of

On July 10, the 10th Chamber of the Council of State declared that “it’s the government that decides.” Minutes later, President Tayyip Erdoğan issued the decree to reopen the Hagia Sophia to worship as a mosque. The date was set: July 24. This was a historically-charged decision. It meant annulling Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s 1935 decision

The Council of Europe (COE) Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention was opened for signature by Turkey on May 11, 2011. The convention eliminates the shortcomings of the Law No. 6284 on the Protection of Family and Prevention of Violence Against Women, which was

President Erdoğan had stated that Turkey would indeed let go of the Istanbul Convention “if our people want to.” However, not many people, aside from a few fanatics here and there, responded to this statement that was testing the waters. Then stepped in the İsmailağa Congregation with a clear demand from the government: they wanted

“The Amendment to the Lawyers Act and Some Other Laws” recently added to the already busy agenda of Turkey. Although the amendment is getting quite a lot of media coverage, most of the discussions I was able to follow were on a political level and did not get into the actual amendments and their consequences

President Tayyip Erdoğan’s efforts to control social media, after having taken care of conventional media, are not a new phenomenon. However, last week he voiced the desire to ban social media, and this is worrying from the freedom of press and expression standpoint. Taking a step back, we realize that by replacing the ownership of