U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on August 12 and, summarizing from the American State Department’s statement, asked Türkiye to use its influence to get Hamas to return to the negotiation table with Israel on August 15. Fidan, as I summarize from Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Öncü Keçeli’s statement, told him
On the morning of August 2, millions of Turkish users found that Instagram had been blocked. By 9:30 PM on August 10, access to the platform was restored. However, the reasons for the block, and the circumstances leading to its lifting, remain shrouded in mystery. One popular theory suggests that the ban was triggered by
Another test of pluralist democracy and rule of law within President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) will take place next week. The test is on August 14-15. The Turkish parliament, currently on summer recess, will convene extraordinarily on August 15 to host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Following the assassination of Hamas leader
While not a single iota of what the AK Party intends with its rhetoric of a “new and civil constitution” is yet clear, Minister of Justice Yılmaz Tunç has declared that a reform strategy document concerning the judiciary, constituting roughly one-third of the constitution, is being prepared. Neither judiciary can be reformed, nor can a
Israel is neither Libya nor Armenia, as President Erdoğan suggests, and Turkey is not Saddam’s Iraq, despite the unfortunate comparison made by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz. Understanding the increasingly tense and potentially dangerous dynamics between these two countries, which were once firmly aligned in this region, requires setting aside nonsense and adopting an action-oriented
First and foremost, we must not leave unaddressed the audacity of Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who suggested that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “is going down the path of Saddam Hussein,” of Irak. The political future of Erdoğan will be decided solely by the Turkish electorate through their votes. Katz, a minister under Benjamin Netanyahu,
President Tayyip Erdoğan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis were in Cyprus on July 20, on the same occasion but for completely different reasons. For Erdoğan and Türkiye, July 20, 2024, marked the 50th anniversary of the “Peace Operation”, as Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit called it in 1974 to liberate the Island’s Turks from massacres.
The Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) commission commenced discussions over a controversial bill aiming to amend the Animal Protection Law in a marathon session filled with heated debates, protests, and high tension. The bill, known for its potential to introduce “euthanasia” for stray animals, sparked strong reactions from various political factions and civil society groups.
Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli’s recent visit to the Police Special Operations Department (PÖH) on July 15 was an evidence that the Turkish government has not learned anything from the July 15 2016 coup attempt. The reason lies behind a scene where Süleyman Karadeniz, Head of the Police Special Operations, welcomed Bahçeli at
Have you seen the 2010 short animation of Serge Avedikian called “Chienne d’histoire”? It tells the story of 80,000 stray dogs, forcibly rounded up and exiled to a remote island in Istanbul in 1910. The dogs died in a cruel manner with their cries echoing through Istanbul for days. The event known as “Hayırsızada Dog