In the past month, a nasty fight has broken out in public between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on one side and Turkey’s judiciary on the other. Given Turkey’s international reputation as an emerging democracy, casual observers of Turkey may be surprised at the battle underway. After all, judicial independence and integrity are hallmarks of democracy and rule of law, and the fact that the government is alleging improper judicial interference in its activities and attempting to limit the courts’ powers is striking. While the AKP’s assault on the judiciary indeed [...]
As 2014 begins, there is no shortage of conflict around the world. For sheer political drama, though, nothing compares to the events unfolding in Turkey, where Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stands at the center of a high-intensity feud that is slowly tearing apart the once wide-ranging coalition that made him enormously powerful. A corruption investigation reaching into the highest levels of government has brought into the open a festering feud among rival Islamist groups. Every day brings new revelations involving some of the country’s most prominent figures, and each day the stakes grow. With every move, the question on [...]
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently visited Istanbul to mark the opening of the Marmaray, a mammoth tunneling project connecting Europe with Asia beneath the waters of the Bosphorus. Constructed at a cost of more than $4 billion, the project is an iconic example of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s grand vision for Turkey. More ambitious still is Erdogan’s plan to build an extensive nuclear power program, virtually overnight, in a country that currently has no nuclear power plants. The prime minister hopes to have two nuclear power plants, with four reactors each, online in time for the Turkish Republic’s [...]
