An impressive campaign by Hakan Fidan’s media team has made almost an entire nation worship him.
I received a text message from my Persian yoga teacher asking, “Is Hakan Fidan the new [Mohammad] Mossadegh for CIA and Mossad?” I was baffled by the comparison between the head of the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT) and the former Iranian prime minister toppled by a coup initiated by British MI6 and the CIA.
For centuries, Russian authorities have modified their approach to managing the country’s large, diverse population, held together by an ethnic Russian core. The war in Ukraine has again altered the Kremlin’s strategy of managing its complex domestic demographics.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s win on 28 May extends his rule until 2028. Shortly after securing another term, which may have been his biggest political challenge, he addressed hundreds of thousands of people outside the presidential palace in Ankara.
The war in Syria has dropped out of the news, like almost everything else, in a time when the Ukraine war seems to dominate all discourse and reporting. But the regime of Bashar al-Assad continues to strangle its own country. Even last year the Russians continued to bomb on his behalf, terrifying civilians and hospitals.
Selahattin Demirtas’ announcement comes amid heated public debate over whether Kemal Kilicdaroglu would resign after he was defeated by President Erdogan in Sunday’s runoff.
The ongoing public debate in Turkey over whether the country’s main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu would resign the Republican People’s Party leadership after his presidential election loss took a surprising twist on Wednesday with the announcement of a departure from another opposition figure.
The key question following the vote is whether the alliance between the HDP and the main opposition Republican People’s Party and its Table of Six partners can endure.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s electoral victory is roiling the country’s Kurdish movement, with its most popular leader declaring from jail that he is withdrawing from active politics. The announcement Wednesday by Selahattin Demirtas, former co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), presages debate on a future course to be charted ahead of critical local elections that are to be held in March 2024. Kurdish voters are poised to play a key role as they did in 2019 when they helped the opposition wrest key cities, notably Ankara and Istanbul, from Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The leader of an insurgent group that rules much of northwest Syria rose to notoriety over the past decade by claiming deadly bombings, threatening revenge against Western “crusader” forces and dispatching Islamist religious police to crack down on women deemed to be immodestly dressed.
Turkey’s influence in Africa has been growing massively over the past 20 years and whoever wins Sunday’s presidential run-off will have to consider where next to take the relationship.
Ever since Recep Tayyip Erdogan took power in Turkey two decades ago, first as prime minister then as president, he has taken an increasing interest in Africa.
There will be a second round for the presidential vote on May 28, but an opposition victory seems unlikely.
Turkey is a country where average schooling is 6.5 years. In other words, the average person is a 7th grade drop-out. Ninety-five percent of Turkish citizens have never travelled abroad.
A senior Iraqi military delegation, consisting of top commanders from Joint Operations Command arrived in the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani on Tuesday.
Top commanders from the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga forces and the military on Tuesday agreed to increase the joint operations against the remnants of ISIS in the disputed areas with the support of the Iraqi air force.