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Despite the earthquake, poverty and corruption, the opposition lost the 2023 elections. In the author’s view, the roots of this lie in a leader-centred social structure and the lack of a real tradition of opposition.
The elections in the Republic’s centenary will go down in history as the result of a period in which law and democracy were sacrificed to political interests. In the author’s view, hopes have been battered by both the government and the opposition.
We are children of a culture that says “speech is silver, silence is golden”. But in a society where injustice has become routine, is silence a virtue, or a comfort with a heavy price?
At Çanakkale, Mustafa Kemal took the initiative without waiting for orders and changed the course of the battle in two hours. In the earthquake of 6 February, orders were awaited for hours. On the vital importance of initiative in disaster management.
In the first hours of the earthquake everyone prayed for those under the rubble and said “this is not the time for politics”. But then those who helped were targeted. On the relationship between the earthquake and politics.
An earthquake is above all a security problem. After every earthquake, the promises made and the taxes collected are forgotten. In the author’s view, repeated negligence is no longer negligence but betrayal.
In the 1970s the ülkücü (idealist) movement spread rapidly among devout young people in the provinces; commando camps, street clashes and ties to the deep state fed a bloody era.
From the Republic’s citizenship-based nationalism to Nihal Atsız’s racist Turkism and the 1944 Turanism trial: the roots of the ülkücü (idealist) movement.
Hostility towards refugees is rising fast in Turkey. In the author’s view, the problem is not migration itself but uncontrolled migration and failed integration policies.
After the attack on İstiklal Avenue, the real question is this: was there intelligence about the attack, and if so, what measures were taken? The author calls for accountability.
As long as government and opposition cast each other as “the other”, politics turns into a dialogue of the deaf. The author asks whether being in opposition can on its own be a common denominator.
The shadow of the 1995 killing of Colonel Rıdvan Özden falls on today’s politics. Starting from a YouTube interview, the author questions the dark reckonings of an earlier era.
Selahattin Demirtaş’s condemnation of the September 2022 attack on a police guesthouse in Mersin drew a harsh response from the PKK. The author assesses how this debate reflects on Kurdish politics.
Once celebrities boasted of their music cassettes; today secretly recorded tapes bring politicians down. The author comments on the “tape era” in Turkish politics and the role of social media in it.
Politics that holds up a multinational civilisation as its model while feeding on nationalism verging on racism is a deep contradiction. The author criticises a style of government that claims to follow Mehmed the Conqueror.
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