Weekly magazine Nokta (“Point” in Turkish) is one of Turkey’s oldest political magazines. It had published earth-shattering stories about the military’s torture chambers in the 1980s and about the corruption of politicians in the 1990s.
These days, most Turkey observers agree that Turkey is in deep trouble. They are deeply divided though, when it comes to explaining why.
I have been off from my Hürriyet Daily News column for two weeks. It is not just that I needed some vacation time - I also naively hoped that Turkey could be slightly better when I returned to writing on it.
On Aug. 21, President Tayyip Erdoğan announced the news: On Nov. 1, Turkey will go to ballots again, for yet another general election that will form yet other set of deputies in the Turkish Parliament.
The so-called “Islamic State” of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, is known not only for its wanton violence but also its slick videos.
I was among those unsurprised when breaking news emerged the other day that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Republican People’s Party (CHP) had failed to agree on forming a coalition government.
These days we wake up in Turkey almost every day to news about some new act of political violence.
This week, as usual, lots of crazy things happened in Turkey.
There is a naïve view of history which assumes that as time goes by, societies become more mature. I have never shared that optimist “progressivism” and have gradually come to believe that history is rather chaos with no traceable destiny.
