Turkey

"Be Serok jiyan nabe!" The well-worn Kurdish adage means "no life without our leader." It was crafted for Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which initially fought for independence then Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey, since 1984. The mantra has gained a new urgency after the botched July 15 coup. The rogue officers who were seeking to overthrow and kill Turkish

On September 7th, the Turkish president Erdogan made an important statement on the results of talks with the US President Barack Obama at the G20 summit in China. According to him, Ankara is ready to accept Washington's proposal for a joint operation to repel militants of the Islamic State from Raqqa . This statement implies a fundamentally new

Turkey is within its rights in defending itself by staging an incursion in Syria, according to NATO’s secretary-general, who is staging a visit to Ankara. “Turkey is the NATO ally most affected by the turmoil and violence in Syria and in Iraq. Turkey has suffered many terrorist attacks. Turkey has the right to defend itself, as all nations have,” Jens Stoltenberg told the Hürriyet Daily News in an interview on Sept. 9.

Speaking in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır, which has been repeatedly targeted by PKK terrorist attacks, Yıldırım said it is estimated that some 14,000 teachers serving in the region are somehow associated with terrorism.

In January 2016, 2,218 scholars from Turkey signed a petition titled “We will not be a party to this crime,” also known as the Peace Petition. Since then the signatories (“Academics for Peace”) have been subject to heavy pressure and persecution. Hundreds of them have faced criminal and disciplinary investigations, custody, imprisonment, or violent threats. Several

“In the speech delivered by Mr. Kahraman, it was recommended to our youngsters, who have internalized our own national values and who are the guarantee of our country’s bright future full of prosperity and peace, that thousands of heroes and leaders in our history could be taken example as role model and followed, not a personality who participated in Cuba’s

Sadly, it’s a classic Middle East moment, when regional players’ mistrust of each other overwhelms their common interest in fighting the terrorist Islamic State. And, equally sadly, it’s a moment that illustrates the frailty of the United States’ Syrian policy, which has built its military plans on the treacherous fault line of Turkish-Kurdish enmity.

While the White House was preparing to consider a secret plan to have American special forces join the Turks, Ankara pulled the trigger on the mission unilaterally without giving officials in Washington advance warning. When clashes started between Turkish and Syrian Kurdish fighters—who are directly backed by U.S. Special Forces—the Pentagon issued

So many would like this to happen – to see Turkey go, to leave NATO, to break its psychological, political and economic dependency on the West. Now that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his allies are quarreling with the United States and the EU, there is suddenly great hope that Turkey may thoroughly re-think its position in the world, strengthen its ties

As the heat of the trauma has slowly started to cool down, an analysis of the bigger picture concerning the failed coup attempt of July 15 in Turkey is becoming possible. It is possible to analyze the situation, seemingly unprecedented in the history of coups d’état both on a global and national scale, with reference to three key factors. They are the following: