Selim Koru
@SelimKoru
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Political ideas, Nietzsche, Turkey. @NottsPolitics , @TEPAV , @FPRI . Tweets in English & Turkish. Not here often. Words: @nytimes @WarOnTheRocks , etc.
Ankara & London
Joined September 2010
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İki gündür COVID-19 belirtilerim var. Londra'dayım, durumum iyi, ama gerçekten ağır bir hastalıkmış bu.
Türkiye'de önümüzdeki hafta büyük bir dalga bekleniyor. Lütfen bu meseleyi ciddiye alın, kendinizi ve etrafınızdakileri koruyun.
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Several hospitals down (below), roads are split open, airports are shut. Thousands of residential buildings have collapsed on themselves. It's a nightmare.
#TurkeyEarthquake
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If you rely on Turkish mainstream news for information, you are highly unlikely to have heard of the gruesome murder of Samuel Paty. It received zero coverage.
You will, however, be exposed to president Macron's statements on Islam at least once a day.
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Galiba herkes askerinin bu pozda fotoğrafını paylaşıyor.
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Arkadaşlar 'Türkiye'de beklenen dalga' konusunda yorum yapan olmuş. Sanki Türkiye'yi teğet geçecekmiş de böyle düşünmeyenler ülkesini sevmiyormuş gibi.
Türkiye'deki durumu Sağlık Bakanlığının verilerinden az çok takip edebilirsiniz. Bu bir pandemi, milliyetçilik yarışı değil.
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Most people in Turkey sort of assume that they will have the opportunity to vote Erdoğan out sometime in the near future.
There will be a moment when the regime tries to renege on that implicit promise. That will be an interesting day.
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While revising the country's 2023 targets, Turkey's planners get lazy and just cut the whole thing in half.
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The NYT is either staggeringly out of touch or for some reason wants to promote this person.
Turkey's currency crisis is anything but a surprise. The country's entire electoral cycle was rearranged around it. Hell, my grocer was ready for it.
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İYİ Party's vote is past the 20% mark.
It took the AK Party a few months to go get to 30% from there (not that it's going to happen again, but still)
Also, there's a huge, huge shift of women moving away from the AK Party (complicated).
This thing is accelerating.
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Turkey's operation in Syria has been deeply revealing of the country's political nature. All political factions except the HDP are behind the Erdoğan government's decision. Only the CHP trembled a bit while bending the knee.
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My latest on Hagia Sophia's opening and its political significance:
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We've moved from “Erdoğan is a goner” to “he won again” overnight.
The emotional gyrations alone are hard to process.
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All Erdoğan had to do was to keep Ağbal & Elvan.
He could have choked out the opposition and decreed Islamist laws, and neither markets nor foreign governments would have cared. Tightening was tough, but bearable.
Biggest mistake since Istanbul. He’s a lot less scary now.
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Haftalardır merak ediyordum, ilk defa burada gördüm:
Enfeksiyonda dozaj önemliymiş. Yani virüsü yüksek dozda almak düşük dozda almaktan daha tehlikeli. Bu yüzden sağlık çalışanları hastalandıklarında genç olsalar bile daha ağır geçirebiliyorlar:
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I wrote about one of the most influential Turkish Islamists in recent years, and his theory of history. Also a little shout out to
@ilker_ayturk
, whose work on the Turkish right I heartily recommend to everyone interested in the country.
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basically everyone in Turkey (pro or anti Erdoğan) thinks that Gülenists abroad are now cooperating with US, UK & German intel agencies.
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My latest on Turkish politics:
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A second earthquake. Friends from the area reporting awful suffering. The death tolls are only the tip of the iceberg.
Solidarity at this time won't be forgotten.
This new earthquake is about 100km to the N of last night earthquake. It has been followed 12 min later by a strong aftershock about M6. Again, it is an exceptionally difficult situation for populations. A major assitance will be required
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Turkey’s approach to the Caucasus is deceptively simple, and in line with its logic in other theatres of conflict/dispute: Turkey-Azerbaijan are stronger than they were in the 1990s vis-à-vis Armenia. They feel that the territorial distribution needs to reflect that reality.
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TR right: Gülenists did it
TR left: Islamists did it
Putin’s politicians: NATO did it
I guess that’s how it’s always worked.
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This did make a splash. Turns out she's just moving to Chicago.
Yurdakul sort of tried to be fact-based under the mainstream media's constraints, which I'm sure was stressful at times.
There are some very brave journalists in Turkey, but I don't consider her to be among them.
Turkish journalist Afsin Yurdakul leaves Haberturk, a mainstream outlet, with these words:
“Without democracy, without the rule of law, without upholding the freedom of expression, journalism cannot breathe. It is our duty to let people breathe.”
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Woke up this morning in Ankara, haven't been able to talk to a single person without extended commentary on the Istanbul decision.
This has touched a nerve. More than ever before, the legitimacy of past and future elections are now in question.
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My take on the elections:
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It’s very early people. The counts are super slow - two separate votes. On my corridor, we’ve only completed one box. The others are still counting.
Cities are going to be slower than rural areas.
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The Turkish Lira over the past 7 years:
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Watching how Turkey's opposition elite is doting on Steinmeier has been cringe. I actually prefer Erdoğan's nonchalance.
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Announcement:
I'm starting a weekly mini-column on Turkish political culture. It'll be in newsletter format through Substack.
If you subscribe, I will email you a very short post (400-800 words) on a subject relating to Turkish political culture every Thursday.
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Turkey currently has 30 cities with the status of “large city” (Büyükşehir.) 13 voted “Yes,” 17 “No.”
Clear rural-urban cleavage.
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That takes guts.
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Turkish and American right-wing sentiment is so symmetrical that the transition here is seamless.
Turkish man who just illegally crossed the US border immediately becomes border hawk, says he's worried about who's coming in and warns of the possibility of "killers and psychopaths" entering the country. Basically, the American dream in 30 seconds.
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Soylu was hailed a hero of
#July15
, became (arguably) Erdoğan's most powerful minister and his most dominant enforcer.
Men like that don't get fired over the timing of lockdown announcements. Things must be bad.
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Erdoğan is behind in the polls for the first time.
He's clearly aware that something is wrong, but it's unclear he knows the extent of it.
Five days before elections, Turkish Pres. Erdoğan announces a 45% wage increase for public workers to 15,000 liras a month.
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A Pulitzer prize winner investigates the PYD. Many in Western press has romanticized them. This is more serious
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My latest on early elections in Turkey
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Background on why the Erdoğan government is preparing to ban the HDP:
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Imagine the level of excitement among big Turkish contractors.
Taliban Sözcüsü Suheyl Şahin: Herkesten çok Türkiye'ye ihtiyacımız var
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Am I the only one who thinks that this may not be bad for Trump?
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Kılıçdaroğlu's speech was impressive today. Turkey's opposition is finding its voice. Political momentum will build up even faster.
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This is very good, as expected. Pan-Turkic nationalists are a complicated group of people.
@Nick_Ashdown
does a great job of taking readers through the finer aspects of the story.
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Historical background of Turkey vs. ISIS ranging back to the Ottoman Empire. Read the lead, if nothing else:
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Saying that Erdoğan engages in the civilizational clash to “distract from domestic problems” is like saying that an exceptionally talented musician plays to make money.
It may be true, but is nowhere near the whole truth.
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Usually the evidence points to a RTE win, and the opposition hopes for a "deep wave" of discontent that's somehow not reflected in the polls.
Now the evidence points to a KK win and the RTE elite hope for a "dip dalga."
So the latest batch of polls are up on the Wikipedia page. With the important caveat (again) that I cannot vouch for the quality of each poll, it's good news for KK. Most of the recent polls have him winning narrowly in round 1 & widening his lead if it goes to a second round.
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I love details like this: pop-singer complains to Erdoğan that her ex-husband (and current boyfriend?), who is also at the meeting, plays tavla on his phone all the time. Erdoğan makes him delete it on the spot.
Demet Akalın: Okan'ı Cumhurbaşkanımıza şikayet ettim, 'telefonda sürekli tavla oynuyor' dedim. Sağolsun Cumhurbaşkanı hemen sildirdi
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Erdoğan has done 8 rallies today. It's 00:24 here, and he's live on state TV.
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Irony of ironies: Ülkücü opposition hold big meeting at Nazım Hikmet cultural center, named after famous communist poet, in chp municipality
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English: I might not be able to come (7 words) = Turkish: gelemeyebilirim (1 word)
#AgglutinativeLanguage
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If we can't get a refund, we want in-store credit.
If we can't get that either, we shall write online reviews. Terrible, terrible reviews.
The financing issue with Turkey and the F-35 will take years to resolve. The US knew this when the decision was made to remove Ankara from the program. I don’t see a link to the F-16 LoR
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The pandemic has accelerated the natural course of Turkish politics. The government clearly feels like it needs to complete its monopoly of the political sphere. I'd also expect foreign policy to gain pace. Everything always happens at once.
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Turkey’s highest circulating opposition newspaper: “Let’s give PKK-Supporting US a strong response: SHUT DOWN İNCİRLİK, DON’T GO TO THE US"
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Here I argue that the MHP isn't as important as it may seem, but also that things wouldn't be too different if it was.
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Ankara’s conservative Keçiören district - we’re 9 people monitoring a single ballot box. People are friendly, but on edge.
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Reading
@ismailsaymaz
’s new book, “ISIS in Turkey.” His main source is TR court documents, so lots of details that didn’t make the news.
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I'm less sure about whether he'll act "rationally" though.
Either way, the moment he loses to KK, even if it goes into a runoff, the music stops. We enter a new phase.
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On Istanbul elections and the S-400 deal, the Erdoğan government either:
a) has amazing secret plans, or
b) doesn't, and its decision making abilities are severely impaired.
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I’m excited to announce that I’ll be a Black Sea Writing Fellow
@FPRInews
in 2018. Expect to see more on Turkish foreign policy, Turkey-Russia relations, Eurasia, and Geopolitics in general.
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There are powerful groups in Ankara that are quietly looking for ways to deescalate. The Su-24 shootdown of 2015 hangs over the whole affair.
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I argue that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, the breakdown of the Turkish-American alliance will probably accelerate:
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Canan Kaftancıoğlu represents what's best about the CHP. The government is right to fear her.
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"Many Kurds see a kindred spirit in his wife, Selvi, an earthy and refreshingly irreverent mother of three. Her solidly middle-class demeanor is in stark contrast with Erdogan’s bejeweled spouse, Emine, and her Hermes handbags." by
@amberinzaman
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My new post is up
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In Turkey, socially one of the most difficult things people will have to do during the pandemic is to not show up for funerals.
Kimse kolay kolay bir yakınına; “Cenazene, düğünene gelemiyoruz” diyemez.
Vicdan ve Corona arasında sıkışmış bir Türk milleti, yasaklar netleşmezse riski yayma potansiyeli taşır.
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One of Turkey's foremost Arabists reports from Tripoli.
The square isn't quite as crowded as it appears from this angle, he says. Everything else evident from visuals.
This sort of popular involvement (or in any case, highlighting it) becoming only more integral to TR FP.
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What's remarkable here is that Kalın agreed to be interviewed by Tim Sebastian. I've said it before: the Erdoğan government's main problem is that it is not honest with itself.
#BerlinForum
audience question to
#dwZone
guest, 🇹🇷 presidential spokesperson
@ikalin1
: Is
#Turkey
a democracy? Tim Sebastian followed up with his own on Ankara's removal of
#Kurdish
mayors. It gets 🔥👇
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This kind of thing happened in Turkey leading up to the 2023 election. Opposition elites rallied around a weak presidential candidate because it was too hard to choose someone else.
Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the
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The opinion pages of the
@washingtonpost
are dripping wet this morning with the reptilian teardrops of Fetullah Gülen.
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My new post is up.
I wrote about the most viral conspiracy theory in Turkish politics today:
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A very well-rounded account of what happened in Istanbul, by
@aylajean
. (Also, I love how
@NewYorker
let her keep Turkish letters, including İmamoğlu's capital "İ")
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One of my favorite political posters of all time:
"Follow me, I know the way..."
Elegance in simplicity.
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If Americans want to stop selling Turkey weapons and threaten to kick it out of NATO, they can do that.
They just shouldn’t tell themselves that it’s going to empower the opposition in some way.
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It looks a bit like the Erdoğan government is taking on Silicon Valley and the German Automotive industry at the same time.
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A new trend in Turkish media is translating fearful Greek coverage of Turkish weapons systems. It's like watching a security dilemma watch itself unfold.
Türkiye ile Ege ve Akdeniz'de gerilim yaşayan Yunanistan'da medyanın en önemli gündem maddelerinden biri de Türk SİHA'ları.
Yerli ve milli SİHA'ların sahip olduğu kabiliyetleri övmekle bitiremeyen Yunan uzmanlar, Atina'nın çok geride kaldığı görüşünde.
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Here's what election night was like in Turkey, plus some of my analysis on where things are going:
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2003'de bugün ABD askeri Bağdat'ı ele geçirdi. Bush yönetimi "kurtarıcı olarak karşılanacağız" demişti. Bölge hala savaş içinde.
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Sitting across Korea vet on the train. His sacrifice helped make S. Korea possible & get Turkey into NATO. But the past is a foreign country
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I wrote about the name change policy
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The Özdağ endorsement will probably give Kılıçdaroğlu a real bump (most of Oğan's 5 points). A lot else needs to happen for Kılıçdaroğlu to win though.
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There's thousands of collapsed residential buildings, maybe more, so true numbers are exponentially higher.
This is a bigger catastrophe than it may appear in some international bulletins.
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Not sure how much this reflects reality, but it seems to be following the PKK's outreach model.
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If I had a penny every time I saw one of these...
This list spreading over Turkish WhatsApp. Fake or upcoming? Dated y'day and clearly no such announcement
Albayrak - energy minister
Aydin - treasury minister
Kalin - foreign minister
Elvan - finance minister
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DC: this war will finally show the Turks that they need us (it's dangerous out there) and they'll be less of a pain.
Ankara: this war will finally show DC how important and powerful we are, and they'll respect us more and give us more things.
Erdogan suggests this would be a good moment for the West to pivot to Turkey
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As anger swells up among Turkey’s opposition, fear is building up among its governing circles.
This trend will only gain pace as popular support shifts more visibly towards the opposition.
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This term has long made me cringe.
@NicholasDanfort
performs a very valuable public service in publicly taking it down.
Will bookmark and send as passive aggressive comment whenever I encounter it (also love how it was published on conquest day)
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Here's my latest piece. The title is a bit provocative, but I basically try to explain things from Erdoğan perspective, using his language.
In Sunday's constitutional referendum, Recep Tayyip Erdogan will seek to defeat Turkey's civil service.
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