Democratic Turkey may at times be touted as a model for the Middle East to follow, but, when it comes to Turkish prisons, there is little that ranks as exemplary, rights watchdogs say.
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.
In most countries, it’s unusual for the looming death of a television character to become a source of official anxiety. In Turkey, however, a hit television series chronicling the 16th century reign of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent has riled officials, who are looking to that era to help shape their own conservative message.
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.
In Turkey, it is not just the cost and questionable necessity of massive government development projects that are giving citizens pause. It is also what critics charge is the undemocratic way the city of Istanbul is being transformed without local input.
Court proceedings are dragging on in Turkey for 44 Kurdish media workers accused of supporting terrorism. While human rights groups say the trial, which opened in September, is an attempt to clamp down on free speech, the Turkish government maintains that some of the defendants are not actually journalists, but propagandists.
The chances of a war erupting between Turkey and Syria appear to be rising. But the heated rhetoric of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government does not seem to be matched by public enthusiasm for conflict.
Most countries in the world have an emergency telephone number for the police. But in Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, an emergency telephone line has been launched for victims of police violence.
A government-backed campaign to strip nine Kurdish MPs of their immunity from prosecution could take Turkey back to the future in its decades-long conflict over Kurdish rights.
Turkey's Ministry of Culture is playing hardball with some of the world’s most prestigious museums. The ministry is refusing to lend historical artifacts to leading museums in the United States and the United Kingdom until they return antiquities that Turkish officials maintain were illegally taken from Turkey.
