Turkey: Civil Society on Trial
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has marked the anniversary of a failed coup against him every passing year — this week was the third — with a national holiday that has… Read more »
Category: Turkey
Post-Erdoganism? Istanbul election shows resilience of Turkey’s democracy
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is grappling with the fallout of the ruling party’s big defeat in the Istanbul mayoral election, and his government faces pressure to release political prisoners,… Read more »
Why the Russian model will not work for Turkey
On June 23, somewhere between 8 and 9 million residents of Istanbul will go to the polls to elect their mayor—again. The leading contenders are Ekrem Imamoglu, a dynamic young… Read more »
How authoritarians are ‘dismantling democracy from the inside’
Authoritarian learning facilitates the ‘dismantling of democracy from the inside’, The Washington Post’s Amanda Erickson writes. It used to be that autocrats came to power through coups or by enacting states… Read more »
Conservative civil society pushing back against Western liberal norms
The rapid rise of Brazil’s new far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro may have surprised some observers but it did not come out of thin air. His success follows years of support… Read more »
What the Arab world needs most
The apparent abduction, and probable murder, of the prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi unmasked the ugly despotism behind the reformist image of the kingdom’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, notes Mustafa… Read more »
Turkey’s election: cause for concern to every liberal democracy
With his victory in Sunday’s elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken his place among the world’s emerging class of strongman rulers, nailing down the sweeping powers he has insisted he… Read more »
Turkey’s historic election: last off-ramp before dictatorship?
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is campaigning for re-election, seized on the latest Turkish growth figures as a vindication of his economic policies in the face of skepticism from not… Read more »
Reason to Hope? Turkey’s Elections Under State of Emergency
Turkey’s snap presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24, 2018, will take place under a state of emergency and will bring in a new presidential system whatever the outcome, Human… Read more »
Middle East has ‘too much democracy’?
Tunisians are aware of their country as the only one in the Arab world trying to make the Islamist–non-Islamist divide work in a genuinely democratic way, notes Thomas Carothers,… Read more »