Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

The newly elected head of Turkey’s largest business group has paid courtesy visits to Cabinet members and the opposition party leaders in Ankara, calling on the next president of the country to take “constructive steps to eliminate growing polarization in society.”

Turkey’s first quarter data has surprised Turkey’s director for the World Bank.

“We did not expect growth to maintain such momentum and we were encouraged by the strong performance of net exports,” Martin Raiser told me in the interview we had recently.

There is no surprise in the announcement by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) that its candidate for the Aug. 10 presidential elections is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The surprise would have been if he wasn’t.

We now know the presidential candidates.

I have to say it in advance, none of the three suit me.

If you say “Recep Tayyip Erdoğan...”

He has got himself so stuck with his 50 percent that there is no way in the world for him to be the president of 100 percent.

If you say “Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu...”

A parliamentary debate on Turkey’s peace process unsurprisingly started with acrimony on July 2 with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) trading accusations.

Ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) officials have declined opposition calls for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to resign, following his nomination for the presidential elections, announced on July 1.

“Prime Minister Erdoğan’s resignation due to his candidacy is out of the question,” Deputy Prime Minister Emrullah İşler told reporters on July 2.  

Opposition parties have criticized Turkey’s top media watchdog for not taking action against the country’s state-owned broadcaster TRT, which they say does not adequately cover the opposition while widely covering the government.

Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, a senior academic and diplomat nominated by Turkey’s two biggest opposition parties as a joint candidate in the upcoming presidential election, has commemorated the Sivas massacre which happened 21 years ago today.

With the announcement of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s candidacy, we now have three contenders for the country’s most prestigious post (if, of course, dissidents in the social democratic main opposition cannot manage to gather 20 signatures to nominate an alternative candidate by July 3).

The expected happened. Yesterday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced his candidacy for the upcoming presidential elections in August. It was a majestic event, organized in a huge hall in Ankara full of thousands of emotional supporters. First, an 18-minute video clip showing the life story Erdoğan was presented.