MER Article The Failed Resolution Process and the Transformation of Kurdish Politics On March 21, 2013 in the symbolic Kurdish city of Diyarbakır, on the symbolic new year’s day of Newroz, in front of a crowd composed of almost a million people and broadcast live by most Turkish news channels, a letter from the imprisoned Kurdistan Worker’s Party’s (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan was r Cuma Çiçek • 16 min read
MER Article The AKP’s Foreign Policy as Populist Governance Turkish foreign policy throughout the Cold War was limited and largely predictable: narrowly focused on national security and preserving the sanctity of its borders while hewing to a predominantly Western orientation. Turkey’s foreign policy reflected the constraints of the bipolar international sys Evren Balta • 15 min read
MER Article Crisis of Capitalism, Crisis of the Republic Today, the crisis of Turkey is both a crisis of capitalism and a crisis of the Republic. To the extent that it is a crisis of capitalism, of a financialized regime of accumulation, its own internal business cycles are synchronous with the cycles of global capitalism. Even though the current economic Yahya M. Madra • 12 min read
MER Article Turkey’s Constitutional Coup Turkey has undergone a dizzying array of crises over the last five years. Beginning with the repressive crackdown against the Gezi Protests during the summer of 2013, the country has gone from being cited as a model Muslim democracy to taking pride of place on the growing worldwide list of democrati Aslı Bâli • 19 min read
MER Article Sur Operation Sur cannot be reduced to the destruction of an old walled city. Beyond the deaths, destroyed buildings and compensation payments, what has been lost are the potentialities—the wish-images—that Kurds imbued in Sur and with which they defended it. Serra Hakyemez • 13 min read
MER Article The Destructive Dreams of AKP Urbanism The Gezi Park protests were the first time that the AKP faced significant public resistance from below to their urban transformation project. The term “below” is important because the AKP’s legitimacy rests on the claim that it enjoys widespread support from below. The protests, however, revealed an Ayse Çavdar • 11 min read
MER Article Turkey Dispatch Turkey’s Islamist hegemons in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been losing their grip on reality for some time. Anti-Western conspiracy theories have multiplied in the country since the attempted coup by Turkish military officers on July 15, 2016. Members of the religious-politica Kerem Öktem • 5 min read
Current Analysis The Story Behind the Rise of Turkey’s Ulema The AKP, in pushing the expansion of the Diyanet for political purposes, also has enhanced the capacity of the institution to pursue its own agenda. Indeed, the unprecedented expansion of the Diyanet in recent years demonstrates its ability to seize opportunities arising from its common cause with A Ceren Lord • 19 min read
MER Article Imperiled Academics in Turkey Dilsa Deniz, an anthropologist of the Alevi-Kurdish religion, was fired from her position as an assistant professor at Nişantaşı University in Istanbul after she signed the Academics for Peace petition issued in Turkey on January 10, 2016. More than 1,000 scholars signed the petition to protest the Jeannie Sowers • 6 min read
MER Article The Emergence of Alevi Televisual Activism Alevis are the second largest faith community in Turkey. As a religious collective incorporating aspects of Shi‘i Islam into their teachings, Alevis have faced systematic state exclusion since the 1923 establishment of the Turkish nation-state, which privileges Sunni Islam despite its avowed secular Nazlı Özkan • 5 min read
Current Analysis Fear and Loathing in Turkey Shortly after the failed coup attempt of July 16, 2016 in Turkey, I received a frantic text message from a lifelong friend, Lale Kemal. Lale is a prominent freelance journalist with an impeccable 37-year record of non-partisan reporting and analysis. She is an internationally known expert on Turkish civil-military relations, Ümit Cizre • 17 min read
Current Analysis Turkey in a Tailspin The epic blunder of the military coup attempt on July 15 has sent Turkey into a tailspin. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the prime minister and cabinet, the parliament, the top military brass, the intelligence community and the police all became aware of the plot at the same time as ordinary Ümit Cizre • 16 min read
