By Barçın Yinanç  

March 9, 2022

The Nation Alliance reasserts Turkey’s place in the West and as a Western democracy. In case of victory, the Turkish opposition alliance will orchestrate a careful distancing from Russia and reset Turkey’s relations with its Western allies. What the main Turkish opposition alliance holds forth is a return to the decades-long principles of the Turkish republic that will be marking its centenary this year. These include, notably, the principle of non-interference in internal affairs of other nations. The opposition pledges to “put an end to practices based on domestic political calculations and ideological approaches in foreign policy.”

By Barış Soydan

March 24, 2022

While Turkey’s opposition alliance inspires little hope as an economic savior, its reduction of Turkey’s democratic deficit and crisis to a question of the power of the presidency and the solution to a restoration of parliamentarianism obfuscates what really cripples Turkish democracy. And as the opposition alliance has closed itself both to the left – ignoring the plight of a working class that is hard hit by the economic crisis – and to the representatives of the Kurdish minority, it cannot credibly claim that it will further the cause of democratic change. Even if the opposition alliance were to prevail electorally, which is by no means certain, it will not alter Turkey’s course.