Tag Erdogan

A sign of dejection?

Greece is trying to stop Turkey (or, rather, Erdoğan) from turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque: The Greek government is preparing a diplomatic push for the European Union to sanction Turkey as a first response to its decision of converting…

Whose president?

Not much of a soccer fan, sometimes I miss out on stories like this. Better late than never: Ilkay Gundogan [İlkay Gündoğan] of Manchester City and Mesut Ozil [Özil], a player for Arsenal London, triggered an uproar in Germany when…

The real coup II, or, Everything is secret

Zia Weise reports on politico.eu about the ongoing purges in Istanbul: It is easy to laugh this off as baseless paranoia, but stories abound of men calling the police on their government-criticizing wives, of village headmen keeping lists of suspicious residents,…

Robert Amsterdam’s new client

​I learned of Robert Amsterdam when he was representing Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Yukos as their international lawyer. Amsterdam’s relentless criticism of Russia’s legal system, which he witnessed in action at the first Yukos trial in 2003-4, was spot on but…

Erdogan’s black hundreds?

Looking back at the fateful night of July 15-16, the feel-good tweets about the Turkish nation standing as one against the perfidious military now seem delusional. In the early hours of the coup, there were no reports of angry crowds taking to…

Now this is the real coup

As reported by politico.eu: The punishment came swiftly for 2,745 judges who were dismissed by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors on suspicion of being connected with the abortive coup… A member of the country’s highest constitutional court, Alparslan Altan, was detained on…

Not as good as 1963 but quite a (half-)year

Leicester City, Trump, Brexit, England losing to Iceland, and now, Erdoğan apologizing or at least writing something as close to an apology as the man can manage without killing himself. Russia’s loss to Wales, although a face in the mud…

Playing with fire in Hatay

The more I read about the history of Hatay, Turkey’s appendage-like province disputed by Syria, the more I am convinced that its status remains a sore point for Ankara. Also, Turkey’s military is in solidarity with Erdogan on the need to…

The Turkoman People’s Republic

The Russian speakers of Eastern Ukraine were not at risk of being killed by Ukrainian forces until Russia’s allies or puppets began the war in Donbass. The Turkomans of Syria have been at risk since the start of the civil…

Any good to come out of this?

The Russian government seems to be overreacting to the Su–24 crisis, threatening wide-scale economic sanctions against Turkey that are certain to hurt Russian consumers. (Bombing Voronezh in response, again.) Is this Putin taking personal offense – an ego contest between the…