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.

By Natalia Konarzewska

January 14, 2022

In mid-December 2021, Turkey and Armenia mutually appointed envoys for upcoming normalization talks. Turkey has wider, strategic reasons for seeking reconciliation with Armenia, and the shift in the balance of power in South Caucasus since the second Karabakh war in 2020 has removed an obstacle for the pursuit of these ambitions. At first glance, the new rapprochement process promises to be more successful than the last time, in 2009, but ultimately the success of the rapprochement will depend on the trajectory of the relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Even though Yerevan realizes that it stands to benefit from a normalization of relations with Turkey, there is nonetheless a risk that its conflict with Baku, and the fear that the Armenian public might not stomach what would appear to be concessions to Azerbaijan, will prevent the Armenian government from pursuing the normalization.

By Barış Soydan

December 6, 2021

For the second time since its founding in 1971, Turkey’s leading business organization has confronted a Turkish government and called on it to reverse its policies. On the face of it, TÜSİAD  is carrying the banner of democracy. However, its pleas for democracy ring hollow. What TÜSİAD deplores is not so much authoritarianism as economic instability. TÜSİAD would hardly endorse an expansion of democracy and strengthening of democratic rights that imperil the primacy of neoliberal capitalism.

By Natalia Konarzewska

August 16, 2021

Turkey is strengthening its military cooperation with Poland and Ukraine. Poland has recently acquired a batch of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 armed drones. The emerging Turkish-Polish-Ukrainian axis is a powerful demonstration of Turkey’s determination to defy Russia. Turkey seeks to placate the United States and to prove its usefulness for the Western alliance in the Second Cold War with Russia.

By Gareth Jenkins

July 15, 2021

Five years after the July 15-16, 2016, failed coup attempt that enabled Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to consolidate his authoritarian rule, many of the questions about what happened that night remain unanswered. Nevertheless, the regime’s narrative about the putsch has become the foundation myth for what Erdoğan and his supporters claim is the emergence of a “New Turkey” – the global defender of the world’s Muslims and a regional superpower, which is constantly thwarting Western plots to undermine it. But not only is this narrative deeply flawed but it is clear that the regime is hiding something. The only question is whether it is complicity, incompetence or both.