By Sarah Glynn

March 10, 2022

Despite the Turkish government’s current efforts to portray itself as a peacemaker who cannot countenance unprovoked aggression, its assault on the Kurds continues both within and beyond Turkey’s borders. Turkish democracy, always a sickly creature, is undergoing a judicial asphyxiation. Tens of thousands of opposition figures are in prison, including thousands of members of the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament, the pro-Kurdish, leftist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Two ongoing court cases could see leading party members jailed for life, and the enforced closure of the party. These cases commit the state even further to violent suppression of Kurdish hopes rather than a political solution.

By Sada Garibova

January 19, 2022

While economic experts predict that Turkey’s new economic model will inevitably send the Turkish economy into a deep recession and impoverish its population, the regime is undeterred, and its commitment to new, unorthodox economic and monetary policies is unwavering. Given the historical pattern, a popular backlash is unlikely, and it would in any case not be allowed to imperil the survival of the regime. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is fully backed by the nationalist cadres of the state bureaucracy. The collapse of the lira may ultimately be more likely to pave the way for a more entrenched, authoritarian regime than to boost the prospects of the opposition.