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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rose to power promising to liberate Turkey’s religious conservatives from state tutelage. More than two decades later, the destruction of the Gülen movement, the operations against the Süleymancılar and Furkan, the imprisonment of Erdoğan’s strongest secular opponent and the judicial takeover of the CHP suggest a darker conclusion: Erdoğan did not abolish […]
Turkey’s secular opposition has never had more reason to understand the dangers of a politicized judiciary than it does today. Since late 2024, the Republican People’s Party has been subjected to what international rights organizations and opposition figures describe as an unprecedented judicial offensive. Hundreds of CHP members, municipal employees and elected officials have been […]
Özgür Özel may have had compelling reasons to leave the CHP after losing its leadership through a court ruling. But establishing another party in Turkey’s already crowded political field—and calling it simply the “New Party”—raises a separate question: was this really the best choice? Özgür Özel and 90 other lawmakers formally left the Republican People’s […]
Özgür Özel’s departure from the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party, CHP) and the establishment of Yeni Parti (New Party) have been presented as a moment of democratic renewal. Following the controversial court decision that annulled the CHP’s 2023 congress and restored Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to the party leadership, Özel and ninety other CHP deputies resigned […]
John L. Esposito, one of the most influential American scholars of Islam and a prominent defender of the Hizmet movement’s global educational and interfaith mission, died on July 15 at the age of 86. Esposito died in Philadelphia from complications following heart surgery, according to Georgetown University. He was Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Religion […]
Turkish courts have jailed two people over social-media posts concerning the failed coup of July 15, 2016, highlighting the risks of challenging the government’s narrative of one of the most politically sensitive events in Turkey’s recent history. An İstanbul court on Friday ordered the pretrial detention of Nasuh Mahruki, founder and former president of the […]
Turkish authorities have detained AKUT co-founder Nasuh Mahruki over a social-media post questioning the official account of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt. The Bakırköy Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office accused Mahruki of “inciting the public to hatred and hostility or degrading the public” after he alleged that the coup attempt had been detected in advance […]
Ten years after July 15, Turkey’s opposition still appears incapable of confronting the political mythology upon which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan built his present authoritarian order. The anniversary messages issued by prominent opposition figures differed in wording and intensity. Özgür Özel repeated the government’s “FETÖ” designation. Ekrem İmamoğlu avoided that acronym but spoke of a […]
Footage of heavily armed officers surrounding an elderly, partially paralyzed man has intensified criticism that Turkey’s latest mass operation relied on intimidation and spectacle against people who appeared to pose no immediate physical threat. Masked police officers carrying assault rifles raided homes across Turkey on Monday in a nationwide operation targeting hundreds of people accused […]
Turkey’s opposition is now being subjected to the political and judicial machinery that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan constructed after July 15, 2016. Yet the CHP still refuses to confront the official story that gave this machinery its legitimacy. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the elected mayor of Istanbul and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s most formidable electoral rival, has been imprisoned […]
