European Union leaders are getting ready to discuss Turkey once again. The timing of the European Council meeting on June 24-25 is crucial, taking place just after the G7, NATO and EU-US summits. Following four years of discontent between Brussels and Washington, this has been an exercise in...
Turkey’s relationships with Egypt and Saudi Arabia have improved following years of friction. Esra Pakin Albayrakoglu, a professor at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul and a visiting professor at the National Defense University, discusses the dynamics influencing Ankara’s foreign policy.
A few years ago, the very notion of Turkish foreign military interventions would have seemed extraordinary. The Turkish republic has been, for most of its history, determinedly introspective. Until the 20th century, it was largely disengaged from its immediate neighborhood, favoring ties with the...
Is this the beginning of the end of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or even the end of the beginning of the end, as Al-Monitor columnist Kadri Gursel has suggested? When the previously unbeatable president pushed for a re-run of the Istanbul mayoral election that his party’s candidate,...
The new presidential term offers Erdogan room for consolidation, but also the need to contain his allies. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s inauguration on July 9 was a little different. Not in terms of personnel, since he has been president of Turkey for four years already, but in terms of substance....
Never mind who’s afraid of President Erdogan — what about his supporters’ fear of life without him? When Turks go to the polls on June 24 — only a little over a year since the controversial referendum that paved the way for a new presidential system of government — the question of...
President Erdogan’s snap poll reinvigorates Turkish politics in unexpected ways. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a master at outflanking his political opponents. Despite rumors that an early general election would be called, no one expected it to be quite so last minute. On June...
