Piotr Zalewski
@p_zalewski
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Turkey correspondent for @TheEconomist . Occasional bylines elsewhere. Opinions my own. RT = interesting. Email: piotrzalewski @economist .com
Istanbul, Turkey
Joined November 2010
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Ukrainian footballer Roman Yaremchuk comes on as a substitute for Benfica in Lisbon. Watch what happens.
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Remarkable speech. Addressed to the Russian people, it should also be heard everywhere.
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Turkey: Bogazici faculty today, after police detained 159 students yesterday.
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Found this character, who has refused to leave Antakya, sitting in front of his antiques shop and blasting Pink Floyd from a cassette player to an audience of bemused soldiers and destroyed buildings. “The message I wanted to give,” he says, “is that life has to go on.”
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Inflation in Turkey. Seven years ago 55,000 lira got you a car. Today it gets you a phone.
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Meanwhile, Turkmenistan’s president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has just unveiled a gisnt statue of his favorite dog
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Pro-Navalny protests in Yakutsk, via
@Andrew__Roth
Temperature in Yakutsk right now: -52C.
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Lira this morning.
(Except there’s nothing to celebrate.)
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Take one of the world’s most stunning cities, and add a month’s worth of unpolluted air.
Result:
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The scale of this is just overwhelming. In Antep, as rescue workers search for survivors in one building, another collapses.
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Rescue worker to Turkish far right politician who has been stirring up hate against Syrians during the rescue effort: “There are Syrians, Europeans, Greeks helping us here… We’re fed up hearing these words.”
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Yesterday the Turkish lira suffered its worst daily loss (in net terms) since 2001. Practically no Turkish newspaper dares to cover this on its front page.
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Scenes from Istanbul this evening.
Maybe - just maybe - giving people two hours notice before imposing a weekend curfew in a city of 16 million was not the brightest idea:
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Turkey’s currency meltdown, a recent history
Time it took the lira to go from 7 to 8 to the dollar: 27 months
From 8 to 9 to the dollar: 11.5 months
From 9 to 10 to the dollar: 1 month
From 10 to 11 to the dollar: 6 days
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98 years ago today, Kemal Ataturk and his army won a decisive last battle in Turkey’s independence war against Greece.
Eleven years later, Eleftherios Venizelos, the Greek prime minister, nominated Ataturk for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now seems a good time to remember both.
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Turkish journalist Afsin Yurdakul leaves Haberturk, a mainstream outlet, with these words:
“Without democracy, without the rule of law, without upholding the freedom of expression, journalism cannot breathe. It is our duty to let people breathe.”
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Navalny, moments before he is sentenced to 3.5 years in prison, draws a heart (for his wife Yulia) on the glass separating him from the rest of the courtroom.
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Turkey’s 2022-2024 economic program (published last month) assumed the following dollar exchange rates for the lira
2021: 8.30
2022: 9.27
2023: 9.77
2024: 10.27
The lira reached 2023 levels this morning, fifty days after the program was published.
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A Turkish football fan (Denizlispor) was banned from his team’s stadium for a year. So he rented a crane. Via
@BirGun_Gazetesi
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Apocalyptic scenes here in Antakya. Corpses wrapped in blankets lining the streets, survivors still being pulled from the rubble, practically every other house flattened. Rescue teams overwhelmed.
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State broadcaster interviews Erdogan ahead of local elections. First interview question: "You held eight rallies today. It is your love for the people that gives you such energy, right?“
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Another small miracle: 65 hours after the Izmir quake (death toll has reached 79), a 3 year old girl is pulled alive from the rubble. Rescue worker and journalist both burst into tears.
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Hard to argue with Erdogan here: "Right now, four million refugees are in Turkey. Let us not forget, almost all of these refugees are Arab... I want to ask the members of the Arab League, how many Syrian Arabs have you accepted?"
SON DAKİKA! Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan: Ey Arap Ligi siz ne kadar Suriyeliyi kabul ettiniz? Siz Suriye'yi Arap Ligi'nden çıkardınız. Şimdi de Türkiye'ye hakaret etmek için almak gibi bir projeyi hayata sokuyorsunuz
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Man, that sofa is cursed.
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Turkey’s foreign ministry calls Russia’s move “a clear violation of Ukraine's political unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
“We find Russia’s decision unacceptable and reject it.”
From Turkey, this is the strongest language toward Russia since 2016.
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Bogazici’s new rector, an Erdogan appointee, said yesterday he loved Metallica and hard rock.
Students today:
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There are known knowns, there are known unknowns, there are unknown unknowns, and then there’s Turkish opposition politics.
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9:05 this morning in Turkey, on the 79th anniversary of Atatürk's death. Photos via
@Hurriyet
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Unseasonably warm November day on the Golden Horn. Someone decided to celebrate.
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Recep Tayyip Erdogan (5492 days in office, first as PM and now as president) has just passed Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (5491) as the longest-serving leader in Turkey’s modern history.
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Biden could not have done Erdogan a bigger favor (and Turkey’s opposition a bigger disservice) than this nonsense
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“The US Federal Reserve does not belong to the public… it belongs to five families.”
That’s Turkey’s finance minister speaking.
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Turkish medical and humanitarian aid deliveries during the Covid-19 pandemic: a map
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One of the indisputable joys of writing for a weekly from Turkey is watching your stories age like fine wine... in a microwave.
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Turkish oppositon MP and human rights activist Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu arrested at home after being stripped of his parliamentary seat last week. Over a tweet.
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Selected Sputnik Twitter accounts, by number of followers
Sputnik Poland: 3k
Sputnik UK: 8k
Sputnik Italy: 8k
Sputnik Germany: 20k
Sputnik France: 63k
Sputnik Mundo: 71k
Sputnik Japan: 82k
Sputnik Arabic: 161k
Sputnik International: 242k
Sputnik Turkey: 613k
Critics reckon that Sputnik wants Turks to come for the coverage of Turkish politics and stay for the pro-Kremlin spin
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Istanbul’s Chora Church, converted from a museum into a mosque earlier this year, before and after - meaning now. A crying (literally) shame.
Meaning all of this will be covered up, at least during prayer times, and at worst completely and permanently.
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Translation: Putin has just ordered the second (after Crimea) partition of Ukraine.
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Bear in mind, as Turkey restricts access to Twitter, that people trapped under the rubble have been using Twitter for days to share their location and call out for help.
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Dr. Sahin said he and Dr. Türeci learned about efficacy data on Sunday night and marked the moment by brewing Turkish tea at home.
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I guess when you go 17 years without an election debate, this is the election debate that you get.
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When you cannot evacuate stranded passengers (demanding accommodation) but can bus in riot police. Istanbul airport.
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Another massive turnout at a Muharrem Ince rally, this time in Istanbul. Photo via
@t24comtr
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Belarus: a group of women literally overpower Lukashenko’s thugs to save a young man from being arrested.
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Massive (over 7.0 magnitude) aftershock has just hit Turkey’s south, hours after the original quake. Hard to watch,
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Best news Turkey has had from Capitol Hill in a while.
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In case you’ve lost count, Turkey is now fighting (or preparing to fight) on six separate fronts: at home, in northern Syria and northern Iraq (against the PKK) in Libya (against Haftar), in the Mediterranean (against Greece and Cyprus), and now in the Caucasus.
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It’s official: a court in Turkey has just ruled to convert the nearly 1500 year old Hagia Sophia (a church under the Byzantines, a mosque under the Ottomans, and a museum under their secular successors) into a mosque.
Photo via AFP
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Turkey grey-listed by the Financial Action Task Force
Erdogan threatens to expel 10 Western ambassadors
Lira plummets to record low after shock 200 bps rate cut
All in a day’s work.
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88% turnout reported in elections in Turkey, a number that puts most western counties to shame.
Elections here have become perhaps the last valve for dissent - but do not let anyone tell you Turks have given up on democracy.
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Istanbul residents queue in the rain to appeal against the Kanal Istanbul project after government publishes environmental impact assessment report (and opens it to public review for 10 days).
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Davide Martello, of Gezi Park fame, has just turned up on the Polish border with Ukraine.
And says hello to his Turkish friends.
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Kilicdaroglu using the kind of language Russia has not heard from Turkey in a while, accusing RU of trying to interfere in Turkey’s elections through deepfakes and fake videos:
“If you want to continue our friendship after May 15, get your your hands off the Turkish state.”
Дорогие русские друзья,
Вы стоите за монтажами, заговорами, контентом Deep Fake и записями, которые вчера были разоблачены в этой стране. Если вы хотите продолжения нашей дружбы после 15 мая, держите руки подальше от турецкого государства. Мы по-прежнему выступаем за…
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Meral Akşener, speaking alongside Imamoglu:
“Years ago, there was a mayor here who was convicted for reading a poem. He called out to you from here and said, ‘This song does not end here.’ Now I promise you. This song will not end here either.”
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It’s not the lira’s plunge since the Turkish elections that’s shocking.
What’s shocking is the lengths to which the central bank went to control the exchange rate ahead of elections, so as to help one side win.
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“If my nation says tamam (enough), I will stand aside,” Erdogan says in a speech earlier today.
Turkish Twitter:
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Istanbul earlier today. The greatest city in the world, no matter what.
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COVID strategy: stop testing.
Election strategy: stop counting.
They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!
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Turkish protesters in front of the Russian consulate in Istanbul tonight, chanting: “Killer Russia, killer Putin”
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Lira as high as 16.23 this morning.
That awful sound you’re hearing is the collapse of Turkey’s middle class.
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An insane night, even by Turkey’s own standards:
Erdogan sacks the central bank governor a day after he imposes a much needed interest rate hike
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Chew on this.
Share of Turks who say Russia is responsible for the war in Ukraine: 33.7%
Share who say the US and NATO are responsible: 48.3%
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Apparently, the Turkish finance minister’s meeting with investors in D.C. was either “very fruitful” or “an absolute sh**show”
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The highest-value banknote in circulation in Turkey is now worth barely over $19.
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Turkish FM Çavuşoğlu just now: "We will suspend the Peace Spring operation for 120 hours for the PKK/YPG to withdraw. This is not a ceasefire."
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Istanbul street dog joins protest against municipal dogcatchers
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Güle güle Huysuz | The queen is dead
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Of the ten countries whose ambassadors Erdogan has called personae non grata
The Netherlands: biggest foreign investor in Turkey
Germany: Turkey’s top trading partner
US: largest exporter of weapons to Turkey
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With Turkish drones pulverizing Syrian regime forces in Idlib, time to repost
@UmarFarooq_
’s excellent piece on Turkey’s UAV program
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In the war in Syria, the worst humanitarian crisis since WW2, it took two years before the number of refugees in Turkey reached 220,000.
Almost as many (213,000) Ukrainians have crossed into Poland in four days.
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The genocide is a matter of almost universal consensus among historians. But this resolution has much less to do with historical truth than with the sorry state of US-Turkey relations. Politics was why Congress never recognized the genocide; politics was why it did so today.
Bombshell: the U.S. House of Representatives has just recognized the Armenian genocide.
Resolution:
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These guys, from Hungary’s disaster management agency, worked alongside Turkish Air Force pilots to save lives in Kahramanmaras, and ended up exchanging badges.
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Last night, the girl who sang from “Frozen” at a bomb shelter in Kyiv sang the Ukrainian national anthem at a charity concert in Poland
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Turkey and Albayrak: the biggest resignation in years and not a single sound byte from a single major TV channel - except Haberurk - or news agency. Basically waiting to be told how and when to report this.
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A Soviet joke
State TV interviewing the citizenry.
“Comrade, in one word, what is the state of the economy?”
“Good.”
“Ok, perhaps in two words then?”
“Not good.”
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Turkey: opposition MP and human rights defender Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu detained this morning (ahead of prayers) after refusing to leave parliament.
Gergerlioğlu had earlier been stripped of his seat and his parliamentary immunity - for a 2016 tweet.
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2011: “Social media will mobilize young people, hasten popular revolutions, bring down authoritarian regimes...”
2021:
A woman did her regular aerobics class out in open without realizing that a coup was taking place in
#Myanmar
. A Military convoy reaching the parliament can be seen behind the woman as she performs aerobics. Incredible!
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Photos from the MBS visit to Ankara from (1) Erdogan’s communications directorate and (2) the Saudi Press Agency
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