By Halil Karaveli

October 6, 2022

CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s potential candidacy in next year’s presidential election is causing tensions within Turkey’s six party main opposition alliance, raising doubts about the viability of the alternative alliance to the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has rebounded in the polls. Turkey’s past, sociology and the right-wing character of the opposition alliance where the CHP is in ideological minority militate against the social democrat Kılıçdaroğlu’s presidential bid. And while Turkey’s long-standing culture war between seculars and religious conservatives may have come to an end, ethnic aspirations and rising socio-economic discontent – to which the left and the right respond differently – are bound to fuel societal conflict and make it difficult, if not impossible, to sustain a the left-right opposition alliance and the notion that there is a viable alternative to Erdoğan.

By Hamit Bozarslan

October 3, 2022

The Turkish, Russian and Iranian regimes share strikingly similar traits. They have emerged to form a group of radically nationalist, self-proclaimed “virile” alternatives to liberal democracy. All three “anti-democracies” project themselves as hegemonic powers, but they remain deeply frustrated former empires and their future is uncertain. Unfortunately, the passivity that the Erdoğan regime has succeeded in instilling in Turkish society, like the Putin regime has done in Russia, may prove to be its lasting legacy, ensuring the survival of authoritarian rule.

By Michaël Tanchum

June 8, 2022

The March 2022 elevation of the Turkey-Uzbekistan relationship to a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” provides the Ankara-led Organization of Turkic States with a new geopolitical heft.  To preserve its autonomy in the face of Beijing's growing regional dominance, Tashkent has turned to Ankara to act as countervailing force in both economic and security affairs.  Combined with the expanding Turkey-Pakistan strategic partnership, this makes Turkey a rising Eurasian agenda setter that will impact the strategic calculus of both Beijing and Washington.

By Alan Makovsky

May 12, 2022

Despite suffering economic consequences, Turkey is diplomatically strengthened by the Ukraine war, reinforcing and seemingly validating the “strategic autonomy within NATO” course that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has pursued in recent years. This, in turn, may help determine the outcome of the presidential election next year.

By Gareth Jenkins

May 6, 2022

The convictions on April 25, 2022, of eight Turkish nationals accused of orchestrating the 2013 Gezi Park Protests have again demonstrated how dependent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has now become on claimed achievements in an imagined world to try to offset his failures in the real one.