I first heard the phrase “Two states, one nation” from Abulfaz Elchibey. It was early 1992, just after Azerbaijan had declared independence from the Soviet Union. Elchibey was still officially banned from politics, but my colleagues Semih İdiz, Aziz Utkan, and I managed to interview him in a basement belonging to the Popular Front in
Türkiye and Iraq signed a “Memorandum of Understanding on Combating Terrorism” on August 15. On the 40th anniversary of PKK militants launching an armed struggle against Türkiye with raids on Eruh and Şemdinli from Iraqi territory, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein signed this symbolically significant agreement. However, this agreement, which
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
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.
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
