Turkey Archive

ISTANBUL—In a major political shake-up in Turkey, Ali Babacan, a former economy minister and once-close confidante of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently ended months of speculation and formally launched a new political party to challenge his old boss. Babacan, who resigned last July from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, formally launched his new Democracy and Progress Party on March 11, at a rally in the capital, Ankara. The DEVA party, as it is known—Turkish for “cure”—unites a slate of former Erdogan allies, including three other former AKP ministers, six former AKP members of parliament and one sitting lawmaker […]

For most close observers, it has long seemed only a matter of time before the long, bloody proxy war between Turkey and Russia for regional predominance in the Middle East would break out into full-scale direct hostilities. That came closer to happening last week, when Russian-backed Syrian forces attacked a Turkish military outpost in Idlib province, leaving more than 30 Turkish soldiers dead. However, few observers would have predicted the utter impotence of Turkey’s ostensible military partners in NATO in the face of what is arguably the gravest threat to the future of the alliance since the Russian annexation of […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein and Elliot Waldman talk about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s escalating military confrontation with the Russian-backed forces of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and how Erdogan’s decision to wade into the Syrian conflict is coming back to haunt him. They also discuss the refugee crisis that erupted this week along Greece’s border with Turkey, and its echoes of the 2015 European migrant crisis. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our […]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Russia on Thursday, seeking to persuade President Vladimir Putin to help stem disaster in Syria’s Idlib province. Turkish forces are locked in fierce combat there with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army in what has become the last bastion of the armed rebels fighting the regime. Before the trip, Erdogan made two other related moves to strengthen his hand. First, he pleaded with NATO to come to his aid. Then, to increase his leverage with his European allies, he opened Turkey’s borders for Syrian refugees to cross into Greece, raising the specter of another […]