The Pokémon character Pikachu has become the unofficial symbol of the opposition to Turkish President Recep Erdogan. Pat Batard/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images Yii-Jan Lin, Yale University In Antalya, Turkey, in the early hours of March 27, 2025, Pikachu was spotted fleeing the police, making a getaway as fast as his short yellow
Spyros A. Sofos, Simon Fraser University On March 1, the start of the holy month of Ramadan — observed by most of Turkey’s Sunni population — the imprisoned leader of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Abdullah Öcalan, made a historic call for the party to disarm and end its 40-year-long armed struggle against
Natasha Lindstaedt, University of Essex When I was buying coffee at a cafe owned by a Syrian man in the UK on Sunday, I asked him what he made of the news that longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad had been ousted from power. He responded optimistically that he and the 7 million Syrians that
Title: A Coup in Turkey: A Tale of Democracy, Despotism and Vengeance in a Divided Land Author: Jeremy Seal In the literary chronicles of political history, rare are the works that blend the rigour of a historian with the narrative flair of a travel writer. Jeremy Seal’s “A Coup in Turkey: A Tale
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses a pro-Palestinian crowd in Istanbul. Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images) Ozgur Ozkan, Tufts University Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pulled his ambassador from Israel on Nov. 4, 2023. Less than a month earlier, he was offering diplomatic assistance to calm the situation in the Middle East. That
A train collision in Greece, a toxic derailment in Ohio, and thousands killed under collapsed buildings in Turkey – February 2023 was a month marked by tragedy across the world. What unites those affected by these disasters is a feeling of injustice and a demand for change within the governments and regulatory bodies
Scott Lucas, University College Dublin It didn’t take long for Syria’s Assad regime to seek political and economic benefit from the devastation of an earthquake. As emergency services were reaching victims of the 7.8-magnitude tremor on February 6, regime-linked organisations demanded governments “immediately end the siege and unilateral coercive economic sanctions imposed on
Georgios Giannakopoulos, City, University of London The war in Ukraine has put Turkey into the geopolitical spotlight. One of Nato’s earliest member states, with a special relationship with Russia, Turkey is attempting to balance its competing interests, as well as increasing its own influence. Meanwhile, Turkey is in the middle of launching a
Ross Bennett-Cook, University of Westminster and Christoph Bluth, University of Bradford Russia has announced plans to begin direct flights to Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, a state recognised only by Turkey. This will make Russia the only nation outside of Turkey to fly directly to the territory since it declared independence from the Republic of
Christoph Bluth, University of Bradford Russian president Vladimir Putin’s increasingly explicit imperial ambitions to reconstitute a Russian empire from the ashes of the Soviet Union has raised considerable fears among former members. The only former USSR state that has fully endorsed and supported the Russian campaign against Ukraine is Belarus, where President Alexander