Author: Serdar Imren

A government that leads the world in jailing journalists has drafted a law that could grant amnesty to thousands of convicted child sexual abusers. The proposal by Turkey’s ruling party would free men from prison on the condition that they marry their underaged victims, sparking a nationwide outcry and forcing lawmakers to temporarily shelve the plan. The controversial legislation, debated in the Turkish Parliament, aimed to defer sentences for sexual abuse crimes committed before November 16, 2016, if the perpetrator married the victim. If passed, the law would have immediately released approximately 3,000 men from prison, effectively legitimizing acts of…

For years, any Turk who dared to criticize the government online has faced a predictable onslaught: a coordinated swarm of anonymous accounts, trolls, and bots flooding their mentions with insults, threats, and disinformation. The government has always maintained that this is the organic voice of a supportive populace. But now, a massive email leak from the heart of the ruling family proves what has long been suspected: this is no grassroots movement. It is a state-sponsored, meticulously planned, and centrally commanded digital army, designed to manufacture consent and wage psychological warfare on its own citizens. The revelation comes from the…

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s recent declaration that the Topçu Barracks “will be built” in Gezi Park is far more than an urban planning announcement. It is a calculated and defiant challenge, a declaration of war on the collective memory of the Turkish people and a vow to pave over the most powerful symbol of civic resistance in the nation’s recent history. By stating, “We need to be brave,” Erdoğan is not talking about construction; he is signaling his intent to crush the spirit of Gezi once and for all. To understand the gravity of this statement, one must remember what…

In a staggering display of the Turkish state’s assault on free expression, a 62-year-old woman has been sentenced to nearly a year in prison. Her crime was not one of violence or slander, but of political satire: holding a banner that cleverly repurposed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s own loaded language against him. The case represents a new low in the government’s war on dissent, demonstrating how even the most nuanced forms of protest are now met with the full, disproportionate force of the law. The court’s decision sends a clear and chilling message: in Erdoğan’s Turkey, the president is beyond…

“In Turkey, journalists now spend more time in courtrooms than in newsrooms.” A Western diplomat’s bitter observation, shared in confidence, perfectly captures the grim reality of press freedom under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The courthouse corridor has become the forced habitat of Turkish journalism, a place where reporters are not covering the news, but have become the story itself—defendants in a war against truth. This is not hyperbole. The statistics are a testament to a systematic purge: in a single year, 500 journalists were dismissed from their jobs, 70 were physically attacked, and thousands have been prosecuted under a law…

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s notorious intolerance for dissent was brazenly exported to the streets of the American capital, as his personal security detail physically and verbally assaulted journalists and protesters outside a prestigious Washington think tank. The incident provided a shocking, firsthand look at the brutal tactics used to silence critics in Turkey, now deployed on US soil. The confrontations erupted as Erdoğan prepared to speak at the Brookings Institution. His bodyguards, exhibiting the same aggression seen on the streets of Istanbul and Ankara, moved to suppress any form of protest. Amberin Zaman, a respected Turkish journalist with the Woodrow…

When President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan cited Hitler’s Germany as a model for an effective presidential system, his office was quick to claim the media had “distorted” his words. Yet, for the editor-in-chief of the country’s most influential newspaper, Hürriyet, simply reporting on the President’s controversial statements was enough to face a potential five-year prison sentence for “insult.” In Erdoğan’s Turkey, the assault on free speech has moved far beyond a “worrying” trend; it has become a systematic and ruthless campaign to crush all forms of opposition. The judiciary, once a pillar of the republic, now operates as a weapon of…

The Republic of Turkey is undergoing possibly its greatest crisis since the founding of the state nearly a century ago. Present trends suggest worse to come as a long-time Western ally evolves into a hostile dictatorship.