By Micha’el Tanchum

February 20, 2020

The Turkey-Russia relationship is in the midst of a major reset. The outbreak of hostilities in Syria's Idlib province has left thirteen Turkish soldiers dead and seven Turkish military posts under siege by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. Prior policy convergences between Turkey and Russia had raised speculation about the prospect of a Turkish-Russian strategic partnership dominating the security architecture on Europe's southern borders. However, Ankara seems to have overplayed its hand in what is fundamentally a transactional relationship with Moscow. A total rupture in Turkish-Russian cooperation is unlikely, even in the event of a Turkish counter-offensive. However, Russia's reduced cooperation with Turkey will likely result in Russia's further development of more robust strategic partnerships with Turkey's rivals – the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. 

By Barış Soydan

February 19, 2020

Massive infrastructure projects have become the bedrock of the political economy of Turkey. With the projected building of a canal that would devastate Istanbul’s ecology, and which will vastly increase the budget deficit, the destructive consequences of the collusion of state power and business interests in Turkey risks reaching unprecedented levels. While Turkish crony capitalism requires new mega projects to survive, the Turkish political regime must keep feeding its cronies in order to retain its grip on the country. But the ultimate project of Turkish crony capitalism could spell the end of Istanbul.

By Halil Karaveli

January 30, 2020

Turkey is facing a new polarization between rich and poor. Inequalities in income and wealth have grown dramatically. As developments in other countries in recent years have shown, growing inequality destabilizes the body politic and invites destructive political forces. In Turkey itself, class divisions have historically benefited authoritarian, conservative populists. Turkish democracy needs a resurrected center-left. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the officially social democrat Republican People’s Party (CHP), has committed his party to the task of rescuing democracy in Turkey. To succeed, he will have to reconsider his belief that the left has become irrelevant.

By Micha’el Tanchum

December 30, 2019

Turkey upended the Eastern Mediterranean's strategic equation with its late November 2019 signing of maritime boundary and military cooperation agreements with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord in war-divided Libya. By defining maritime borders with the internationally recognized administration in Tripoli, Ankara ostensibly has broken its regional isolation and gained greater legal standing to challenge the boundaries Greece established with Cyprus and Egypt upon which the current arrangements for Eastern Mediterranean natural gas development depend. While previously compartmentalized, Turkey's formalization of its commitment to Tripoli has interlinked an already tense maritime stand-off in the Eastern Mediterranean to a new escalation spiral in the Libyan Civil War in which Turkey's rivals possess escalation dominance over Turkey.

By Halil Karaveli

December 2, 2019

By the end of November 2019, 24 out of 69 mayors in Kurdish cities in Turkey had been dismissed and 19 had been arrested. The Turkish regime exploits nationalism to neutralize the opposition. Yet the opposition cannot dodge its own responsibility for the dismantling of democracy in the Kurdish cities of Turkey. Its refusal to make a principled stand against the crackdown on elected Kurdish representatives plays into the hand of authoritarianism and wastes an opportunity to build a democratic bloc. It should also be clear that Turkey cannot afford to give up on democracy for the Kurds.