Turkey’s governing party swept to an historic landslide election win on June 12, but failed to gain enough parliamentary seats to rewrite the constitution without help from its opponents.
Turks go to the polls on June 12 for a parliamentary election all but certain to deliver victory for the ruling Justice and Development Party. Yet amidst divisive nationalist rhetoric and threats from Kurdish militants, fears of increasing authoritarianism and warnings of an overheating economy, much else regarding Turkey’s future is shrouded in doubt.
As Turkey’s June 12 parliamentary elections draw nearer, public attention is focusing on how a set of explicit videos involving politicians from Turkey’s third largest political party, the ultranationalist MHP, are influencing voting preferences.
Telephone engineer Yilmaz Hakal remembers as a child catching fish as big as his forearm from the river running through Dilovasi, a town on the Asian coast of the Sea of Marmara. But these days, not much flows under the arches of its fine Ottoman bridge apart from garbage, rafts of white foam and the toxic runoff from factories.
Turkish election officials on April 21 approved the bids of seven out of 12 mainly Kurdish-backed candidates who were earlier disqualified from running in the country's upcoming June 12 general elections.
Amed cannot recall the day 19 years ago when the Turkish army drove his family from their burning village, but the Kurdish teenager has many other memories to explain his anger.
In its 2,400-year history, the tradition of camel wrestling in Turkey has seen many winners and losers. But owner Ismail Egilmez had reason this year to celebrate a totally new kind of triumph. His beloved camel had just won the first-ever beauty pageant of its kind.
It's a plot that, if accurate, has the potential to mark a turning point in Turkish history. The problem is, there are doubts about the authenticity of key evidence against the defendants.
At a rundown football stadium in Istanbul, Nigerian team members huddled together to say a prayer as they prepared to take on Cameroon. A star-and-crescent Turkish flag fluttered above them in the late afternoon breeze, a couple of hundred African fans were in the stands and, outside, a group of curious Turks looked on as the city’s own version of the Africa Cup of Nations got under way.
