The March 21 ceasefire in the battle between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Turkish state offers Turkey not only the hope of peace after decades of bloodshed, but poses profound implications for the region at large.
This month, the Turkish government sent to parliament a major judicial reform package that it claims will change once and for all Turkey’s bad-boy image at the European Court of Human Rights. But critics say the initiative will not enable substantive change of Turkey’s controversial anti-terrorism law.
In Turkey, when parents discover that their child is gay, violence and even murder can result. But one Istanbul-based organization is fighting to reverse that trend by appealing to the parents themselves.
After public pressure forced him to back away from a head-on effort to drastically curtail abortion rights in Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is resorting to back-door methods to get his way, women’s rights activists assert.
Amid ongoing opposition to the Turkish government’s cooperation with Syrian rebels, speculation is growing in Turkey that Syria may have had a hand in the February 1 suicide bombing attack at the US Embassy in Ankara.
An extreme leftist group is Turkish security forces’ chief suspect in the February 1 suicide bombing of the US embassy in Ankara that killed two people, and left several others injured.
Turkey’s multi-billion-dollar gold sales to neighboring Iran could put the country on a collision course with its close ally, the United States, when high-ranking diplomats from the two countries hold talks in Washington.
A tactical alliance in Turkey between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and a movement headed by theologian Fetullah Gülen is unraveling. And the break-up is threatening to turn acrimonious.
As close political collaborators for over a decade, President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan built the Justice and Development Party into Turkey’s dominant political force. But now, the two men appear poised to part ways.
For many in Turkey, the name “Baglar,” a slum district in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, a center of the Turkish state’s decades-long conflict with Kurdish rebels, conjures up images of masked youngsters clashing with police, throwing stones or Molotov cocktails. But for 37-year-old local schoolteacher Gokhan Yildirim, the name means just one thing – basketball.
