By Gareth Jenkins

October 29, 2021

By backing down on his vow to expel ten Western ambassadors for calling for the release of jailed philanthropist Osman Kavala, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has averted what threatened to be the most serious diplomatic crisis since his Justice and Development Party (AKP) first took office in November 2002. But, unless Kavala is soon released, the respite will only be temporary. The crisis and his reaction to it also suggest that Erdoğan genuinely believes his own rhetoric, including the often absurd conspiracy theories he increasingly uses to mask his own policy failures.

By Halil Karaveli

September 29, 2021

While a solution to the Kurdish problem will likely continue to remain out of reach, Turkey has no alternative but to muddle through, alternating between cautious reform and clampdown. Turkey can only hope that regional developments, and in particular American policies in its neighborhood, will not contribute to bringing things to a calamitous head between Turks and Kurds. The recent decision of the United States to allocate $170 million to the Kurdish militia in Rojava will certainly not alter the perception in Ankara that it faces an American-Kurdish threat against which it must remain vigilant. 

By Barış Soydan

September 22, 2021

The AKP government is signaling a retreat from generous immigration policies, which were never disinterested in the first place. But a heavy responsibility falls also on the main opposition CHP, which has opted to exploit xenophobic sentiments – while remaining silent about the exploitation of the migrant workers. Given Turkey’s troubled past of ethnic violence the growing hostility to the Syrian and Afghan refugees, and the political accommodation from left to right of this hostility, is of deep concern. Turkey’s past should have taught the country’s rulers, and those leaders who aspire to rule it, that conjuring an “internal enemy,” against which the nation must defend itself, is a recipe for disaster.