Burak Bekdil
ARTICLES BY: Burak Bekdil
On Missile Deal, Turkey’s True Ally Is Russia, Not America
The Trump administration has offered to sell $3.5 billion worth of Patriot missiles to Turkey, apparently in an effort to stop Ankara from going ahead...
Erdogan’s Self Interest Always Comes Before His Values
Is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a devout ideologue or a pragmatist? The answer is both. Perhaps a more relevant question is: When is he...
Turkey’s Syrian Quagmire
At first glance, the plan looked viable: using the “Arab Spring” as a legitimate pretext, Turkey would convince Syrian President Bashar Assad to resign; the...
The US-Turkey Diplomatic Crisis
The current Turkish-American diplomatic crisis is fundamentally different from other such crises in 1964 or 1975. Turkish public sentiment in the 1960s and 1970s was...
Turkey: New System, Same One-Man Show
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, undoubtedly the most popular and divisive leader in modern Turkish history, has already ruled the country longer than Atatürk, the founder...
What Turkey’s New Islamist-Nationalist Alliance Means for the World
Four decades after they emerged as marginal parties in the 1970s, Turkey’s militant Islamists and ultra-nationalists won a combined 53.6% of the national vote and...
Turkey Holds ‘Elections’ Again
On June 24, Turkey will hold its sixth election in four years. The Turks will choose between augmenting what is practically one-man rule based on...
Turkey’s Erdogan vs. the Free Press
First the good news: Turkey, which is already the worst jailer of journalists in the world, may no longer need to put newsmen and women...
Turkey Wages a Personal War in Syria
In a rather theatrical show, the fall of the city of Afrin -- a Kurdish enclave in northwestern Syria -- after two months of battle between Turkish...
Turkey and Iran’s Skin-Deep Friendship
After having fought several inconclusive wars, the Ottoman Turks and the Safavid Persians decided -- in 1639 -- to embrace a new code of conduct that would last for...
