Turkey’s Syria policy is often portrayed as a case of foreign policy failure driven by ideology. According to this view, Ankara abandoned realism in favor of Islamist enthusiasm during the Arab Spring and later returned to pragmatism after paying significant political and strategic costs. While this narrative highlights an important shift, it relies on a simplified understanding of the relationship between ideas and foreign policy.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) emerged as a dominant military and territorial actor in eastern Syria following the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS. Their control of large areas has created sustained tension with Turkey, which views the SDF as an extension of the PKK. Turkey’s opposition to an independent SDF military structure, alongside Damascus’s efforts to reassert authority in eastern Syria, has made the status of the YPG, the SDF’s armed wing, a central issue in the negotiations, including the most recent talks in December.

The current negotiations and phone diplomacy have essentially boiled down to one key question: where Maduro will end up when he finally leaves power. Turkey has emerged as the most realistic destination for Maduro if he is pushed to leave power.

As geopolitical escalation intensifies across Eurasia, middle powers are facing more challenges—ensuring their national interests while not fixating on great powers’ shifting priorities. Situated far apart geographically, Turkey and South Korea rarely appear together in strategic discussions. However, the two countries share striking similarities. Both countries have built significant industrial capacities, face revisionist neighbors, act within the boundaries of the US-led alliance structure, yet maneuver more independently at the same time, pursuing strategic autonomy within the fragmented international order.

The foreign ministers of Turkey and Egypt met in Ankara on Wednesday for the first session of the Joint Planning Group. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty was also received by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Such routine meetings, which Turkey holds with many countries, provide a useful moment to review where relations stand and how current dynamics may shape future cooperation.

1990’ların başında Sovyetlerin dağılmasıyla birlikte, Türki cumhuriyetler bağımsızlıklarını kazandı ve Orta Asya yeniden jeopolitik bir hareketliliğe sahne oldu. Bu bölge artık yalnızca Rusya’nın değil, Çin’in, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nin ve hatta Türkiye’nin de ilgi alanında bulunuyor.

This submission to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) highlights severe issues undermining the integrity of Türkiye's judiciary, particularly focusing on rampant judicial corruption and impunity as well as human rights abuses which they facilitate. Based on the most recent incidents of corruption concerning members of the judiciary who serve in courts in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara, this report seeks to examine the high-level corruption within the judiciary and the Turkish government’s failure or even willful ignorance in addressing it.

This report focuses on Turkey's prominence as an emerging market for cocaine trafficking and organized crime in the last decade. Cocaine production in Latin America has dramatically increased since 2013, and Turkey’s status as an emerging market has attracted the attention of Latin American government officials on the front lines of the cocaine trade.

This report sets out to provide a comprehensive analysis of the tactics employed by the Erdoğan administration to achieve repressive goals abroad and the vulnerabilities and how they are enabled by the AML and CFT regulation in place.

This submission highlights the ongoing systematic actions and omissions by Turkish authorities against the so-called members of the Gulen Group, framed as crimes against humanity. It demonstrates the violations of recommendations that even Türkiye has supported.

This report offers an update to the United Nations Committee against Torture (the Committee) regarding the obstacles to implementing the Convention against Torture (the Convention) in Turkey. As a coalition formed by a collective of former Turkish diplomats, our focus is on the systematic torture faced by former diplomats detained at Ankara Police Headquarters. We delve into the Turkish context and present insights from our organization.

His electoral victory in May 2023 gave President Erdoğan five more years to further consolidate his power, eviscerate institutions, fill the bureaucracy with yes-men and expand his corruption network. This, of course, raises questions about the Turkish political system’s chances of recovery, the prospects for democratization after Erdogan and the regime’s tolerance for his demise.