By Gareth Jenkins

July 15, 2021

Five years after the July 15-16, 2016, failed coup attempt that enabled Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to consolidate his authoritarian rule, many of the questions about what happened that night remain unanswered. Nevertheless, the regime’s narrative about the putsch has become the foundation myth for what Erdoğan and his supporters claim is the emergence of a “New Turkey” – the global defender of the world’s Muslims and a regional superpower, which is constantly thwarting Western plots to undermine it. But not only is this narrative deeply flawed but it is clear that the regime is hiding something. The only question is whether it is complicity, incompetence or both. 

By Alan Makovsky

July 2, 2021

The day after the June 14 Biden-Erdoğan summit, one former Turkish official opined, “Before this meeting, I thought that saving US-Turkish relations is Mission Impossible. Now I think it’s only Mission Extremely Difficult.”  That reaction pointed to the result of the summit: a net gain, if only a tentative one, for the Turkish President, when no gain at all had been expected.

By Ryan Gingeras

June 17, 2021

As the Turkish public grapples with the repercussions of a crippled economy and a grinding pandemic, Turkey’s twitter-sphere, as well as much of its press, remains transfixed on the revelations of Sedat Peker. The videos reinforce certain realities regarding the Turkish state’s relationship with organized crime and with the violent far right. The impact of this reputed gangster on Turkish politics speaks to the influence of the country’s far right, which fits neatly within the country’s broader historical development since the 1970s. Peker’s videos are a reminder of the obstacle to democratization that the far right networks in the state represent.