Burak Bekdil
ARTICLES BY: Burak Bekdil
How Turkey’s Erdogan Fuels Corruption and Abuse
Ethem Sancak is a Turkish businessman with an empire of media companies. Sancak, a former Maoist, once declared that he was in spiritual love with...
Turkey’s Erdogan Uses War to Deflect His Domestic Failures
The article “Give War a Chance: Arab Leaders Finesse Military Defeat,” by Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, and published in the Summer...
How Turkey Bypasses Western Arms Embargoes
In a landmark $1.5 billion deal in 2018, Turkey agreed to sell 30 of its T129 attack helicopters (allegedly indigenous but in fact produced under an...
Turkey’s Erdogan Could Be in Serious Trouble
The Turkish Islamists’ first experience of long-term governance, now in its 19th year, has turned the country into a caricature. With annual inflation and interest rates...
Turkey’s Problems Grow in the Eastern Mediterranean
Yet another Turkish diplomatic embarrassment has been caused by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s self-aggrandizement. Turkey’s neo-Ottoman strongman would topple Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and replace him...
Biden’s Use of the G-Word Furthers Turkey’s Isolation
The American presidential tradition of commemorating the beginning of the forced exile of millions of Ottoman Armenians occurs on April 24, and it customarily tests...
The West’s Nauseating ‘Post-Truth’ Over the Gaza War
It is not just Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who censors people. With big media brands in the “cradle of democracy” enthusiastically supporting...
Turkey: How Not to Handle a Pandemic
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago, the nations of the world have fought a near-existential war against the plague of the...
The Stunted Growth of the Emerging Islamic Bloc
There are strong historic, ethnic, and religious ties linking three geostrategically located Muslim countries under the umbrella of an emerging strategic alliance, with the potential...
Jihadis Are Becoming Turkey’s Permanent Proxy Force
An assortment of jihadi groups holed up in northern Syria under Turkey’s protection are becoming the permanent proxy force of the new Ottomans. This looks like...
Turkey, the Kurds, and the ‘Gara Affair’: How Not to Rescue Hostages
The “Gara Affair” will be recalled by both Turks and Kurds as a dark moment in their histories. It entailed a disastrous rescue operation meant...
Islamism Is Stunting Turkish Academic Achievement
Turkey, with a population of 83 million and two Nobel Prizes won, ranks 62nd on the list of countries by Nobel laureates per capita. This...
Turkey’s Democracy Is Wasting Away
Turkey’s Islamist leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has not lost a single election, be it presidential, parliamentary, municipal, or referendum, since he came to power...
Will the Turkish Air Force and Erdogan Turn to Russia?
NATO’s second-biggest army had a deterrent air force both during and after the Cold War. In 2020, the Turkish Air Force (TuAF) was the world’s...
