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.
Several hospitals down (below), roads are split open, airports are shut. Thousands of residential buildings have collapsed on themselves. It's a nightmare.
#TurkeyEarthquake
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.
This piece by
@ayayciog
&
@gonultol
is very good. Turkey isn't Russia. It's weirdly particular about elections as an institution. Even a small margin would be a big problem. Erdoğan has to manufacture consent. There is no "rabbit in a hat."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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
Kimse kolay kolay bir yakınına; “Cenazene, düğünene gelemiyoruz” diyemez.
Vicdan ve Corona arasında sıkışmış bir Türk milleti, yasaklar netleşmezse riski yayma potansiyeli taşır.
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.
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.
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
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")
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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)