The Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) opponents suffer from a common condition: failing to understand the nature of power, no matter how hard they try. They cannot grasp the practice of seizing and preserving political power with an eye on internal and external factors. For a long time, I attributed that shortcoming to the opposition’s prolonged lack of proximity to power. I imagined that they simply had no experience with the difficulty of striking a healthy balance between the development and implementation of policy and the generation of legitimacy needed to maintain one’s power. I was obviously aware that their commitment to neo-nationalist, Kemalist and leftists ideologies effectively blinded them, perpetuating their weakness.
The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) have launched two operations, Claw Tiger and Claw Eagle, which constitute some of the broadest cross-border military operations against PKK targets in northern Iraq in recent years.
The Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has been claiming for weeks that the Turkish government intended to “incite street protests in order to declare a state of emergency.”
Coming to terms with the past is necessary for newly formed political parties in order to create an authentic platform. That settlement must be multidimensional and serve as a source of hope for voters. The particular challenge that the Future Party (GP) and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) face isn’t to criticize the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), from which they broke off, or President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – or to show the courage to launch new movements. They have already crossed those bridges.
Turkey's deals in Syria have provided a great opportunity for a more secure region, but there is still a lot of work to do