After almost a century of marching in lockstep with the secular ideas of Ataturk and the Kemalists, Erdogan is taking a hammer to the entire edifice.
In an interview, the former Turkish President said, “What happened [the coup attempt] was a crime that will ultimately fail because Turkey is not an African country and is not located in Latin America.”
In April 2014 I touched on attempts to expose corruption among government leaders in Turkey. It is sad to hear that this struggle continues, and those in power are taking increasingly aggressive measures to stay there.
On Sunday, for the first time ever, more than 41 million voters in Turkey went to polling stations to elect their president by popular vote. Despite turnout being low, with some suspecting the holiday season might be the reason, ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) candidate Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan handily beat both of his rivals with 52 percent of the vote.
In September 2011, on the heels of the Arab Spring upheaval, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey, visited Cairo. In the shadow of the chaos of the Arab Spring, he took the opportunity to point out that “the Turkish state is in its core a state of freedoms and secularism.” Two and a half […]
Nothing seems to be safe in Egypt these days. Political opponents of the military leadership are the chief targets for the attacks, attacks that include live fire from security forces. They are not alone: The seething rampages have spread to Christian churches, the media, foreigners, those held in custody, and even to the corpses waiting […]
That perfect moment of the triumph of the people happened again in Syria. The rebels captured another border crossing between Syria and Turkey, lowering the Syrian flag and raising their own banner. It is a symbolic moment of victory – and in a bloody civil war abundant with various factions and no real positive […]
Recently, a Turkish public opinion survey, conducted by MetroPoll was published, showing important shifts in the public perception of the government and politics. Conducted through 14-19 September 2012, in 27 cities, surveying 1275 respondents, the poll indicates serious shifts in public perception in the last three months. Those who believe ”Turkey is headed towards the right […]
It essentially was an accident. Saddam Hussein had been whipped in the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush called on Iraq’s Kurds and Shia to rise up. They did — but Bush was all talk; there was no U.S. military help and they were slaughtered. So as Kurdish refugees clung to the freezing […]
Dear followers of FPA’s Middle East blog, News.Az, a leading online news source of the Caucasus recently conducted an online interview with me – here you can find the full version of the interview: —————————————————————————————– Turkey is a new leader of the Muslim world in the Middle East. Are you satisfied with the Turkish policy […]
Officials said about 10,000 Turkish infantry and special forces punched into northern Iraq on Oct. 19 in an effort to destroy bases of the Kurdish Workers Party. They said the operation was in response to a PKK strike in southeastern Turkey in which at least 26 soldiers were killed. In order to understand this last […]
Chief of Staff General Işık Koşaner and all of the force commanders of the Turkish Armed Forces resigned by 18:00 EET today (July 29, 2011). This is considered as the biggest protest in Turkish republican military history and the first time that the Chief of Staff has resigned together with the commanders of the navy […]
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