The Debate - Which course for Turkey? Mass protests defy Erdogan's 22-year grip on power

The Debate - Which course for Turkey? Mass protests defy Erdogan's 22-year grip on power

There was a sea of humanity out in the streets last Saturday to protest the jailing of Turkey’s popular presidential contender Ekrem Imamoglu, but now the country's on a weeklong post-Ramadan break. Long enough to dull the momentum of the country’s biggest mass movement in more than a decade?

Inside Turkey’s executive coup

It finally happened: Ekrem İmamoğlu, Istanbul’s mayor and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s most formidable likely challenger in the 2028 presidential election, was formally arrested on flimsy corruption charges, after four days in custody. The move was a long time coming, and it cannot be dismissed as mere political manoeuvring. It might not seem like it, but this is how coups often happen nowadays: with no blood and no noise beyond the …

Arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu's party, which organizes anti-regime protests in Turkey, is performing a rope dance. The elections are still far away, enthusiasm and resistance must be maintained while the Erdoğan regime does everything it can to quell the protests. We have analyzed with a Turkish expert what may come now in the country.

In Turkey, 'We are no longer afraid to speak out about the things that have become unbearable for us'

Several hundred thousand demonstrators gathered again in Istanbul on Saturday. Some figures from the ruling Islamo-conservative party have denounced the regime's repressive drift, as more than 2,000 people have been arrested since the protests began.

Opinion | Turkey: History Comes Back To Bite Erdogan

Saturday saw some of the biggest anti-government protests in Turkey since the arrest of opposition leader and mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, less than two weeks ago. Ozgur Ozel, the leader of Imamoglu's Republican People's Party (CHP), who organised Saturday's demonstration in Istanbul, claimed on X that there were 2.2 million people in the crowd. Most reports from the scene said the number of demonstrators was at least in the hundreds of th…

The authorities face a challenge of unprecedented magnitude. ...