Blog post archive

Friday, 12 May 2023
Erdogan Struggles with Securing the Votes of Young People and Women in Turkey’s Fateful Election

In one of Turkey’s most popular soap operas Kizilcik Şerbeti [Cranberry Sorbet] Nursema, a young conservative woman in love with another man, is married off by her family to another against her own wishes. On her wedding night, in an argument with her new husband she is pushed off the balcony. ...

Wednesday, 10 Aug 2022
Erdogan and Putin Cordially Probe One Another’s Faults and Failures

The meeting in Sochi, Russia, on August 5 between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was more than just another chapter in the long track record of bargaining and testing the limits of mutual patience between the two leaders. Putin’s war in Ukraine has badly damaged ...

Thursday, 3 Mar 2022
Turkey’s Difficult Balancing Act in the Ukraine Crisis

It’s not difficult to imagine Turkey’s President Erdogan watching Putin’s failures in Ukraine with a solid dose of schadenfreude. Putin has been the kingmaker in Syria since 2015 and Erdogan, not one for compromise, has had to negotiate with Putin to secure Turkey’s interests. The most critical of these has ...

Friday, 5 Jun 2015
Turkey's Critical Election

With only days to go before legislative elections in Turkey on Sunday, 7 June, the political uncertainty of its possible outcomes are filling newspaper columns. This is a change from the past two elections where a victory for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was almost a foregone conclusion. ...

Thursday, 5 Jun 2014
Turkey’s Ambitions in Africa

In August 2011 Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan took his family, his foreign minister, and an entourage of cabinet members to visit Somalia as part of a humanitarian mission to highlight the plight of 12 million Somali victims of drought. The visit was symbolically important, as Erdoğan travelled to Mogadishu, the ...

Friday, 7 Mar 2014
The True Cost of Turkey´s Crisis

One of the foundational concepts of good democratic governance is that of a separation of powers. French Enlightenment philosopher Baron de Montesquieu´s argument for the separation of political power between the three branches – executive, legislative and judiciary – hinges on the notion that power should not be centralized in ...