Tag

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

The Earthquakes of Erdogan

As an Economist headline editor put it recently, “Turkey sits at the crossroads of tectonic plates as well as civilisations.”  And when the 7.8 magnitude earthquake centered near Gaziantep, Turkey caused a confirmed death toll of 50,783 souls, it highlighted the risk of autocratic license, boasting, and related corner-cutting to…

Update: Turkey

In late August 2022, Haluk Bayraktar, the CEO of Bayraktar drone company Baykar, reportedly pledged that the company would not sell its drones to Russia “no matter how much money we are offered.” This, while expressly continuing to sell them to Kyiv in solidarity with Ukraine. Yet in March, Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kiran…