Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey would move forward with ratifying Finland’s NATO application, paving the way for the country to join the military bloc ahead of Sweden.

The breakthrough came as Finnish President Sauli Niinistö was in Ankara to meet with Erdogan and 10 months after both Finland and Swden applied to become NATO members in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abandoning decades of nonalignment.

“When it comes to fulfilling its pledges in the trilateral memorandum of understanding, we have seen that Finland has taken authentic and concrete steps,” Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara following his meeting with Niinistö.

With Erdogan’s agreement, Finland’s application can now go to the Turkish parliament, where the president’s party and its allies hold a majority. Ratification is expected before Turkey holds its presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 14 May.

Erdogan suggested Wednesday that his country might take up Finland’s accession following Niinisto’s trip.

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NATO requires the unanimous approval of its 30 existing members to expand, and Turkey and Hungary have failed so far to ratify the accession of the Nordic neighbours.

Turkey’s government accuses Sweden of being too soft on groups that it deems to be terror organisations, including Kurdish groups, and has said it has fewer problems with Finland.

“This sensitivity for our country’s security and, based on the progress that has been made in the protocol for Finland’s accession to NATO, we have decided to initiate the ratification process in our parliament,“ Erdogan said Friday.

Turkey, Finland and Sweden signed an agreement in June last year to resolve differences over the Nordic states’ membership.

Source: Euronews

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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has appointed a new economic team to get spiraling price increases under control following his recent re-election victory. Among the appointments are a new central bank chief and a new economy minister, both of whom have been praised by international observers for appearing capable of undoing Erdogan’s unorthodox policies that have contributed to the country’s inflation woes.

Marketplace’s Sabri Ben-Achour spoke with Victoria Craig, a reporter based in Turkey who has been covering the election and its aftermath. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Sabri Ben-Achour: So let’s just zoom out real quick and talk about economic policy in Turkey. Inflation there is insane. It’s off the charts. And the newly reelected president has basically so far done literally the opposite of what economics says you should do to fight inflation. Why has that been?

Victoria Craig: Well, it’s because President Erdogan has just always been opposed to higher interest rates. He’s said in the past that they cause inflation rather than help it. He’s described them as the mother and father of all evil. Over the past two years, interest rates have been slashed from 19% to 8.5%, and that is despite soaring inflation that topped out in the fall at 85.5%.

Ben-Achour: With that in mind, Turkey now has a new central bank governor with some sort of traditional economic credentials. Tell us about her.

Craig: Well, her name is Hafize Gaye Erkan and based on her resume, you can see why the international community is sort of cheering this appointment today. She’s a dual Turkish-American citizen. She has a degree in financial engineering and operations research from Princeton. She spent a decade at Goldman Sachs and most recently she was the co-CEO of the now-failed First Republic Bank for eight years. She left that job in December 2021.

Ben-Achour: And Turkey’s also got a new finance and treasury minister, Mehmet Simsek. So with this new team, do we think Turkey is going to start digging its way out of its inflation problem by raising interest rates and doing what economics would suggest you should be doing?

Craig: Well it certainly feels like that’s what’s been teed up. And when he took over on Sunday, Simsek pledged to return Turkey to “rational economic policy”. This week, we’ve already seen part of that new strategy put in place with the lira’s more than 7% plunge to more than 23 to the U.S. dollar. It had been artificially held above 20 ahead of the election, and economists still say there’s room for it to fall even further. That itself is inflationary. So many expect the interest rate hikes will be very soon to combat both the impact of the currency declines and the already very high inflation levels that we’re seeing here.

Ben-Achour: On the other hand, raising interest rates can be tough politically. How do we know President Erdogan isn’t going to just intervene in economic policy like he has in the past to just scrap the whole thing?

Craig: We don’t know, that’s the short answer. The next central bank meeting is in almost exactly two weeks. As you mentioned, though, the big question is how much we’re going to see interest rates rise, and for how long. As we’ve seen in the past, the president has not been shy about dismissing central bankers and finance chiefs that he disagrees with.

Source: Market Place

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President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan renewed his country’s bid to become a member of the European Union, amid wrangling over Sweden’s NATO entry, but political experts aren’t completely convinced of the Turkish leader’s aims.

Erdogan surprised many on Monday by linking Sweden’s bid to join NATO with his country’s accession to the EU. He said European nations should “open the way” for Turkey to join the political bloc in exchange for Ankara’s approval of Sweden to be a member of the military alliance. But these are two completely different processes for two very separate institutions.

“I was quite surprised he linked this,” Maria Demertzis, senior fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, told CNBC Tuesday. “You are throwing a fish net to see what you can get,” she said of Erdogan’s move.

Turkey and the EU have had a challenging relationship over the years. Ankara applied to be part of the EU back in 1987 but, after several bumps in the road, talks to join the political group froze in 2018. The EU deemed that Turkey was putting forward a lot of political reforms that actually moved it “further away” from the bloc.

One of the policy changes that infuriated the EU was a 2017 referendum that gave Erdogan more executive powers.

“He needs money,” an EU official, who did not want to be named due to the sensitive nature of the topic told CNBC Tuesday, regarding why Erdogan brought up this issue again now. “All this new friendship with the West. He has not changed. He wants something,” the same official added.

A spokesperson for the Turkish representation office in Brussels was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

In 2016, the EU agreed to disburse 6 billion euros ($6.5 billion) in two tranches to Ankara in order for it to deal with a high influx of refugees. The agreement came after the EU saw an unprecedented level of refugees at its borders.

“The EU has a huge problem if Erdogan doesn’t cooperate,” Demertzis said. “The EU depends on Turkey to deal with migrants.”

Refugee arrivals into the EU in 2023 are aren’t currently near those levels seen in 2015, at the height of the region’s migration crisis. However, with around 4 million refugees currently based in Turkey, the lawmakers in Ankara still have a lot of negotiating power when it comes to Brussels.

“It is more than [money],” Özgür Ünlühisarcıklı, director of the Ankara office for the think tank The German Marshall Fund, told CNBC Tuesday.

″[Erdogan] expects a more special relationship,” he added, mentioning a potential visit of the French president later this year to Turkey. Erdogan “needs to see more visits of this sort,” Ünlühisarcıklı said.

What else could the EU give?

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU and the institution that monitors countries’ accession process to the bloc, said Monday that it is up to Ankara to do the work needed to join the political and economic group.

“The European Union has a very structured process of enlargement and with a very, very clear set of steps that need to be taken by all candidate countries and even for those who want to become candidate countries,” a spokesperson for commission told reporters Monday.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez hits back at defense spending criticism

“The accession process for each candidate country is based on the merits of each country,” the same spokesperson added.

But, according to Ünlühisarcıklı, Erdogan might not even want membership of the EU. “It goes too far” as this would ensure certain unwanted measures are introduced in Turkey, he said.

He mentioned that customs union modernization and visa liberalization would be more appealing to Turkey. The former would support commerce with European countries and the latter would allow Turkish citizens to travel more easily in the EU.

However, it will be difficult for the EU to give Turkey significant benefits. Countries such as Greece and Cyprus have historic disputes with Ankara, for example. It is also hard for some EU nations, mainly in the wake of the war in Ukraine, to trust Erdogan given his links to the Kremlin.

Source: CNBC

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Turkey still needs to approve Sweden’s application – and has made that conditional on Stockholm cracking down on groups that Turkey describes as terrorists, including those it blamed for the effigy.

A Swedish minister branded the stunt as “deplorable”, but Turkey said the condemnation was not enough.

Images of the hanged effigy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan near Stockholm City Hall were published on Wednesday by a pro-Kurdish group called the Swedish Solidarity Committee for Rojava.

The group implied it wanted to evoke the hanging of Italy’s wartime fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. It urged Mr Erdogan to “take the chance to step down now, so you don’t end up upside-down in Taksim Square”.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu blamed the stunt on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia – both of which Ankara calls terror groups.

Sweden has vowed to distance itself from both groups in order to gain Turkish support for its Nato bid, which has faced months of delays.

Turkey has said Sweden’s new centre-right coalition government, which is backed by a far-right party, has been “more determined” and easier to work with than the previous one, but the protest has triggered fury.

Mr Cavusoglu told state media that Sweden had a choice: either “turn a blind eye to this and bow down to it” or keep its promises to take action against “terror groups”.

Turkey has summoned the Swedish ambassador over the incident and cancelled a visit to Ankara by Sweden’s parliamentary Speaker.

And prosecutors in the Turkish capital have launched an investigation, according to Anadolu news agency.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the protest was an act of sabotage against his country’s Nato application, and dangerous for Sweden’s national security.

He told TV4 it was “extremely serious” to put up “a kind of mock execution of a foreign democratically elected leader” in a country like Sweden, which has a history of high-profile political murders.

But a member of the pro-Kurdish group behind the stunt told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that the activists were trying to stand up for Swedish democracy – which was being “sabotaged” by Mr Kristersson.

The member of the group added that Turkey had not reacted in a way a democratic country should.

Source : BBC

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Turkey will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14, the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially announced.

“Our nation will go to the polls to elect its president and parliamentarians on May 14,” Erdogan said in a speech on Friday after signing the election decision.

The announcement was expected with Erdogan saying in a speech last week the Turkish nation would do “what is necessary” on the date now officially announced as election day.

The elections could be the country’s most significant vote in decades, with Erdogan’s two-decade rule of Turkey at risk.

The opposition has united around Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the second-biggest party in parliament, the Republican People’s Party (CHP).

However, another prominent opposition leader, Meral Aksener, initially opposed Kilicdaroglu’s candidacy as prime minister, voicing her doubts last week as to whether the former bureaucrat, regarded by some as uncharismatic, could beat Erdogan.

On Monday, Aksener announced her support for Kilicdaroglu.

Erdogan, whose popularity has waned as Turkey’s economic crisis continues, has been accused of authoritarianism by his opponents.

His government’s response to February’s devastating earthquakes in the southeast of Turkey, which killed more than 46,000 people and left hundreds of thousands living in tents or temporary accommodation, has also been criticised, although Erdogan has defended the government’s actions.

Erdogan, who has been Turkey’s leader since 2003, and has occupied the presidency since 2014, still retains significant support, and could yet emerge on top, alongside his AK Party.

Source: Aljazeera

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As the final battle for the Turkish presidency is getting closer, experts say Turks are on high alert for potential censorship and internet shutdowns.

Popular VPN service Proton VPN first registered a spike in sign-ups ahead of the first round of elections. The provider told TechRadar that the daily usage of its Turkey VPN has continued to soar.

This climate certainly doesn’t come as a surprise considering that current President Erdoğan is infamous for its strict grip on the internet, especially during times of political crisis. Here’s what’s at stake for people in Turkey in the next few days.

Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst

“Turkey’s history of internet shutdowns, coupled with the recent restrictions on social media, highlights the concerning trend of suppressing information during political unrest. This raises alarm over the possibility of further internet restrictions as the upcoming elections draw near,” Surfshark spokeswoman Gabriele Racaityte-Krasauske told TechRadar.

Turkey is the fourth-worst country in Asia by internet restrictions and first in Western Asia, Surfshark reports. The country counts, in fact, about 20 nation-scale mass-censorship incidents since 2016, according to data collected by UK-based internet watchdog NetBlocks.

The Turkish social media website Eksi Sozluk was restricted on the eve of the first round of elections. Some accounts and content was also taken down across online platforms like Twitter and Facebook recently. DDoS attacks on independent media sites during the election night and on the opposition’s electoral result monitoring platform after the vote counting have also bolstered concerns.

Despite these being relatively isolated incidents so far, Director of Research at Netblocks Isik Mater, who’s currently in Istanbul monitoring the elections, told TechRadar: “Turkish people are hoping for the best but expecting the worst therefore preparing for possible disruptions by seeking alternative communication channels and ensuring they have access to reliable news sources.”

The stakes are even higher this time, since whoever wins the polls on May 28 will govern the country for the next five years.

President Erdoğan, who’s been ruling the country for 20 years, can count on a solid alliance boosted by the recent endorsement of the third-place candidate. In the opposition there’s Kemal Kilicdaroglu backed by six allied parties. After the first round on May 14, the candidates received 49.5% and 44.9% respectively.

“The current climate across the country is quite grim. Regardless of who wins the election, they will inherit numerous challenges including economic struggles, humanitarian crisis across earthquake affected areas, and the refugee crisis,” explains Mater.

“People are anxiously awaiting the election results as they believe it will determine the fate of the country and access to information is a key part of that.”

A spike in Turkey VPN usage

Short for virtual private network, a VPN is security software able to spoof users’ IP address location so that they appear to be browsing the web from a completely different country within seconds. VPN services also encrypt all the data leaving a device for helping users enjoy better privacy when online.

No wonder there was a huge increase in VPN downloads during the election days. However, this time, the trend seems to have been a bit different than usual.

“Normally we see spikes in sign ups in the hours following government censorship of social media, news sites and other similar online resources. The Turkish elections were unusual in that we saw a significant increase in sign ups (44,000 daily sign ups at peak) ahead of the first round of elections,” a Proton VPN spokesperson told TechRadar.

“This would imply that people in Turkey were preparing themselves in case the government began a program of censorship. This also resulted in a spike in use, despite no increase in censorship that we are aware of, and today we still see daily use higher than pre-spike levels.”

As we have seen, Turks are increasingly turning to circumvention tools to be ready in case Turkish authorities decide to throttle social media access and internet connection during the crucial hours leading to Sunday evening.

Experts encourage people to download different services so that users can hop among them in case of blocks. We also suggest checking our guide on the best free VPNs to ensure you’re using a safe, high-quality product. On the other hand, Surfshark and some other providers are committed to supporting journalists, NGOs and activists in Turkey and elsewhere internet freedom is at risk, urging whoever is in need to reach out.

Racaityte from Surfshark said: “A potential internet restriction during the election could hinder the spread of crucial information that could shape the outcome of the election, undermining the very essence of democratic elections.”

Source: Yahoo

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Last year, as Turkey marked the anniversary of an earthquake that ravaged parts of the country in 1999, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hailed government “urban transformation projects” that would shield people from future catastrophes. “As humans, it is not in our hands to prevent disasters; yet, it is in our hands to take measures against their destructive impacts,” he said.

Now, the Turkish president stands accused of failing to do just that — and faces the enormous challenge of a vast humanitarian crisis. The country’s worst natural disaster in almost a century has already claimed more than 19,000 lives on their side of the border with Syria. Erdoğan is now battling criticism that his government was too slow in getting help to stricken areas and that Turkey was ill prepared. It comes at a time when the president, who rose to national power just after the turn of the millennium, is waging his toughest re-election campaign yet.

“This is going to be the major issue in the election . . . [it] is terrible news for Erdoğan,” said Berk Esen, an assistant professor of political science at Istanbul’s Sabancı University. Born in Istanbul into a working-class family, Erdoğan, now 68, began championing conservative politics as a teenager.

The diehard football fan led an Islamic party’s youth branch in his early 20s. He later shot to prominence when elected Istanbul mayor in 1994. In 2001, he founded the Justice and Development party (AK party), choosing an acronym that meant “pure” to contrast with the corrupt, chaotic coalition governments.

The AKP, which had roots in Turkey’s Islamist movement but cast itself as pro-European and pro-business, won in a landslide in 2002 as voters panned the incumbent’s economic mismanagement and handling of the İzmit quake. “The 1999 earthquake was one of the reasons the governing parties not only lost but were wiped off the map,” said Atilla Yeşilada, an analyst at GlobalSource partners.

Erdoğan, known for his powerful rhetoric and knack for getting things done, became prime minister in 2003. While much of his political energy was consumed by battles with the army and other institutions, he also embarked on a huge transformation of national infrastructure. This gathered pace after the global financial crisis, as a wave of cheap money flooded in. Turkish prosperity increased while new hospitals, bridges, highways and airports sprang up.

Source: Financial Times

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