17.06.2020 00:04 Mafia wars in Turkey in the time of corona There may have been changes in the relations between the underworld and politics in Turkey but nevertheless the relations between criminal chiefs and the politicians and bureaucrats can still overwhelm the political agenda. As politics is criminalized, mafia is further politicized. 10.05.2020 10:26 Big Diyanet is watching you! The Diyanet was originally designed by the republican regime as a tool of “de-Islamization”, but it has ironically turned into an instrument of “re-Islamization” of society under the AKP regime. It has become a supersized government bureaucracy for the promotion of Sunni Islam. 22.04.2020 09:29 Children's Day in Turkey: Kulturkampf and denial * April 23 marks the first sitting of the Grand National Assembly in 1920, the nucleus of republican Turkey. It is also celebrated as “Children’s Day”. This year is the centenary of the April 23 national day and it is rather unfortunate that the coronavirus outbreak will not allow public ceremonies and festivities on this important day. In compensation, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will address the nation by reciting the verse of Turkish national anthem live. 04.04.2020 22:18 The bright post-pandemic vision of President Erdoğan The problem is what Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls 'the danger of transition into a continual state of exception' in which the exception is no longer the exception but the norm. 30.03.2020 00:24 Menderes again prompts animated discussion Over the past week, a political row over an animated cartoon shown to schoolchildren has become the second item on the Turkish news agenda after the coronavirus outbreak. It depicts the 1961 execution of former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. The importance of this sixty year old affair, why it was chosen to be presented to schoolchildren at a critical moment can only be understood through reference to the narrative of the ruling AKP government. 21.03.2020 12:08 Newroz: Turkish névrose This year, Newroz and the accompanying neurotic symptoms of the Turkish psyche may pass silently around the country due to the coronavirus emergency. The importance of this day, March 21, however, as all the signs indicate, will never diminish, on the contrary, it will continue to determine the future of the Kurdish and Turkish people in the country and region. 14.03.2020 00:24 The OdaTV affair: Hidden headlines Last week, a chain of arrests and the subsequent court decisions to imprison six journalists hit the headlines in Turkey. Two of the imprisoned journalists are the co-authors of the 2019 book “Metastaz” (Metastasis) in which they investigate how, in the post-15 July 2016 environment, different religious sects have gained positions in the state structure by filling the void that resulted from the purging of the Gülenists. 06.03.2020 08:33 Operation Idlib: the ethno-religious ideological dimension The current engagement of the Turkish Armed Forces and their proxy Sunni troops in Idlib province is with the Syrian military. Behind the thin windows of this showroom, pro-AKP pundits have been carrying out a comprehensive ideological operation with a series of arguments. The intra-Muslim sectarian character of the violence in Syria inevitably enters into the picture. 29.02.2020 09:32 Confessions of a former political Islamist irk “all the President’s men” With his newly acquired profile of a repentant political Islamist, Abdullah Gül may this time have the courage to meet the challenge from the palace but there is much more that requires self-criticism, since he was by no means an outsider of the AKP circle of power. 22.02.2020 06:02 SADAT: the horsemen of the apocalypse? A number of allegations have recently surfaced over Adnan Tanrıverdi, a former security aide to President Erdoğan. Tanrıverdi is said to oversee SADAT, a shadowy paramilitary group close to the President. Allegations of the company’s involvement in the combat training of the jihadist paramilitary groups loyal to Turkey go further to suggest that SADAT pushed for the current escalation in Idlib. Can it be compared to Iran's Revolutionary Guards? 14.02.2020 01:02 İlker Başbuğ: political weathervane? Başbuğ’s imprisonment was a turning moment in AKP’s consolidation of power. His release was also the symbol of a dramatic shift in AKP’s and Erdoğan’s stance against their former Gülenist allies. And now, as İlker Başbuğ is again on the stage, there is all the more reason to suspect that we are on the brink of a substantial turn in the state and society. 07.02.2020 00:12 Death then silence The data pointing to the escalating incidence of femicide; the soft approach by the police and judicial authorities towards male perpetrators; and the sustained immunity of men with political or financial power and influence all indicate some rather disquieting trends in Turkey’s social life: a safe haven for misogynists where women live in permanent insecurity. 31.01.2020 01:46 Rahşan Ecevit: the Eva Peron of Turkish national-socialism Despite being a novelist and a painter, Rahşan Ecevit’s name is mostly associated with politics. She was not merely the wife of a politician but a top politician in her own right, whose stance determined Turkish society’s fate at certain critical moments. With all its rights and wrongs, Mrs Ecevit’s legacy will occupy an exceptional place in Turkish public’s collective memory. 25.01.2020 13:35 Hrant Dink murder: two trials and “The Cut” Why Hrant Dink among all the anti-establishment journalists and all the prominent figures of Armenian community? What is the specific reason that made him the target of this fatal hate crime? Fatih Akın’s 2015 film “The Cut” may provide an answer to this question. 17.01.2020 00:19 Erdoğan and Putin: Friends for life? At the economic foundations of society, Erdoğan has imposed new rules over conventional business elites, similar to Putin’s coercion of the Russian tycoons to obey his authority. Overall, the deeper, structural dimension of the Putin-Erdoğan rapprochement probably indicates that the Russian experience of transition to post-Soviet capitalism provides the blue print for post-Kemalist Turkey. 04.01.2020 10:20 Mehmet Ağar: The deep voice of the state He served as the national police chief, Minister of Interior and Minister of Justice in the centre-right True Path Party (DYP) cabinets back in the 1990s, but had to resign after the Susurluk scandal in November 1996, which uncovered links between senior state figures and organised crime. Since then, Ağar does not have any official titles. Yet, his statements imply that he speaks on behalf of “the state”, that is, what is otherwise known as the voice of “the deep state”. 27.12.2019 00:32 Turkey's political prisoners: the case of Osman Kavala 20.12.2019 01:00 Turkey’s Eurasianist shift: bluff or strategic turn? Eurasianists, as championed by their self-styled leader, Doğu Perinçek – head of the left leaning nationalist Homeland Party – argue that since 2016 the AKP has been transformed to adopt their strategic position. Perinçek argues that he is the main architect of this transformation. In turn the Eurasianist/Nationalists have also compromised their hard-line secularism to recognize religious affiliations as part of national unity. 13.12.2019 00:29 Davutoğlu: Great expectations and doomed reputation Davutoğlu aims to turn a new page in his political career with the launch of a new party, which, his spokepersons declare, is grounded on a revival of the “real AKP,” promising a resurrection of the original equilibrium sought to be achieved through the ‘Turkish model’ of moderate Islam. This appeal is expected to inflict damage on the AKP’s organizational structure and a haemorrhage in the electoral base. 07.12.2019 01:21 Alevis: “Turkish history X” The collective memory of Turkey’s Alevi communities consists of dark layers of trauma. Although in its early years in office the AKP government launched an Alevi initiative to open dialogue with the community, it was shelved after some discussion along with the breakdown of the Kurdish rapprochement in 2015. Moreover, the Islamist character of the AKP government resulted in a tangible decrease in the number of Alevi civil servants, particularly among the ranks of the police, military and in the education system. 29.11.2019 00:41 The death of a general “in his labyrinth” Turkey's former Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt died at the age of 79. Being one of the most controversial figures in Turkish political and military history, Büyükanıt is known with two significant events, with one leading Turkey into a political turmoil and forcing early elections.