Turkey Should Revisit Its Kurdish Opening
Turkey’s heralded “Kurdish Opening” in 2009, in which the Erdoğan government took concrete steps to better integrate Turkey’s Kurds into political and civic life by relaxing restrictions on Kurdish...
View ArticleWhen It Comes To Freedom Of Speech, Turkey Is Still All Talk
It looks like the attention being paid to Turkey’s abysmal record on speech issues has finally created enough noise to get the government to sit up and take notice. Deputy PM Bülent Arınç said on...
View ArticlePerhaps Erdoğan Is Not As All-Powerful As We Thought
The worst kept secret in all of Turkish politics is that Prime Minister Erdoğan wants to revamp Turkey’s political system in order to create a strong presidency and make himself the first newly...
View ArticleGuest Post: The Foreign Policy Implications Of The Ocalan Talks
The always excellent Dov Friedman needs no further introduction at this point to O&Z readers (his previous guest posts are here, here, and here), and he weighs in again today to look at the foreign...
View ArticleA Turkish Course Correction
There were a couple of extremely consequential stories out of Turkey toward the end of last week that I didn’t get a chance to write about with the Israeli elections going on, but I would be remiss if...
View ArticleA Tale Of Two Speeches
Two high profile speeches were delivered in Israel and Turkey yesterday, each inspiring and giving cause for hope, but only one of them is likely to be transformed from rhetoric into tangible gains....
View ArticleWhat Comes After The Turkish Protests
Events in Turkey are still taking their course and so it is obviously premature to write any type of postscript, but I thought it might be useful to try and look ahead and game out some of the longer...
View ArticleGuest Post: Does Erdoğan Need To Shift Course?
Dov Friedman – who is depriving the world of his prodigious knowledge by not starting his own regular blog – is resuming his spot today as O&Z guest poster par excellence to write about whether or...
View ArticleWhat’s Going To Happen After Turkish Elections?
The short answer is, nothing good. No matter how things shake out on Sunday when Turks go to vote in municipal elections, I don’t thing the results are going to alleviate Turkey’s current instability...
View ArticleThe Problem With The Turkish Government In A Nutshell
Turkey is reeling over a tragic loss of human life following an explosion and fire at a coal mine in Soma, with the death toll up to 238 as of this writing and at least 120 miners still trapped. The...
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