By Gonca Tokyol

June 8, 2020

Turkey’s Interior minister Süleyman Soylu has widely come to be seen as the “Second man” of the Turkish regime, and has recently strengthened his position. The fiercely nationalistic Soylu boasts broad popularity among the supporters of both the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its partner, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The future of a post-Erdoğan AKP is going to be decided by how the rivalry between Soylu and the not-so popular finance minister Berat Albayrak, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's son-in-law, plays out.  Increasing popular, Soylu has also become a target. Yet the combination of his center-right roots, his adoption of the Islamic conservative AKP and the endorsement of the right-wing nationalist MHP means that Soylu can lay claim to all three ideological traditions of which the right in Turkey is composed. That makes Soylu a strong pretender not only to the leadership of the right, but also of Turkey.

By Halil Karaveli

April 13, 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic might prove to be a disaster that leads to radical change in Turkey by giving new credence to the idea of the social state. So far, the Turkish state has demonstrated a lack of compassion for the plight of the broad mass of the population. But if the pandemic wreaks havoc in the fabric of society, the state may well conclude that its own best interests would be better served by abandoning neoliberal class policies and turning itself into a social state.

By Michaël Tanchum

April 13, 2020

On April 3, 2020, as Turkey passed 20,000 registered cases of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appeared on television to announce the implementation of a partial shutdown in Turkey, restricting movement in 31 of Turkey's 81 provinces. The new stricter measures came as the increasingly rapid spread of the virus propelled Turkey to the world's 9th highest number of COVID-19 cases and the world's 12th highest number of COVID-19 deaths. With its economy already overstretched by concurrent military interventions in Syria and Libya, Turkey is likely to find coping with the additional challenge of COVID-19 to be untenable.