How did Estonian democracy erode in the 1930s? How did liberal dissidents express their discontent under a more oppressive regime? Why is political rhetoric important, both now and then? Dr. Liisi Veski, fellow at the Skytte Institute, University of Tartu, dives into this complex, informative world of letters.   Baltic Ways is brought to you by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, produced in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.    Subscribe to our newsletters:  FPRI’s Baltic Bulletin AABS new ..read more

Editor’s Note: FPRI is publishing a collection of essays analyzing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s victory in the Turkish presidential election in May 2023. The articles examine the Kurdish role in the election and the extent to which anti-refugee rhetoric was normalized in the campaign. In addition, our authors delve into the future of Turkey’s Syria policy, Erdoğan’s command of the Turkish state, and what could happen after Erdoğan is (eventually) no longer in power.    On May 28, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won re-election, the second such time he has defended himself for that o ..read more

Turkey held its first presidential runoff elections on May 14 and 28. Polls prior to the election showed Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s People’s Alliance and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s Nation Alliance in a close competition, with both candidates in the 40 percent range, which suggested the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and Kurdish voters would be the key to electoral victory. The Kurdish movement has entered into elections since 1991 under ten different parties as a result of continuous threats of party closures, and the tenth of these, the HDP, was under threat of closure due to an ongoing court case and ..read more

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has won a third and final presidential term. He now has a mandate to govern until 2028, when he will be at the end of his constitutionally allotted three terms. Being 69 years old and appearing more lethargic every year, it is increasingly unlikely that he will continue as president beyond that time. This means that the opposition has lost what is likely their last opportunity to defeat Erdoğan at the ballot box.  Erdoğan’s last term will introduce a new problem to Turkish politics: succession. Who, after all, can do what Erdoğan does? Consider for a moment how compli ..read more

Two days after the first round of presidential elections in Turkey, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the opposition candidate who trailed Erdogan’s by five points after the first round, published a video in which he cast the refugees in Turkey as a security threat and vowed to send them back home. Diverging from the positive and inclusive tone that characterized his election campaign, Kılıçdaroğlu sounded aggressive. In contrast to most of his earlier videos, shot either in his modest kitchen or in his home office, this one was shot in front of a gray wall with a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. “We didn ..read more

Erdoğan’s win is a fact. He prevailed in a contest which was not exactly fair but not unfree either. Millions of Turkish voters threw their lot with the reis—the “leader” as he is often known to fans and foes alike—whether they genuinely supported him from the start or were influenced by the strong pro-government bias in the media and the generous promises by the AKP party-state. The opposition Nation Alliance did the best it could but, frankly, they were fighting an uphill struggle. Even a leader with more charisma than Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu would have struggled to keep together as broad and div ..read more

Unlike in previous elections, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan decided to deliver his victory speech at the presidential complex in Ankara, the so-called Külliye, instead of the AKP party headquarters. This choice was far from a simple coincidence. It was a display of power. After all, Erdoğan won the second round with a margin of 4.3 percent despite economic, political, and social vulnerabilities.  A several hundred thousand strong crowd that had gathered in front of the Külliye was frenzied, waving Turkish flags, making nationalist grey wolf salutes, and Islamist Rabia signs. National grandeur and ..read more

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In a world of border walls and obstacles to migration, a lottery where winners can gain permanent residency in the United States sounds too good to be true. But in 1990, the United States Diversity Visa Lottery was created to do just that. In this month’s People, Politics, and Prose, Carly Goodman joins Ronald J. Granieri to discuss her new book Dreamland. Goodman and Granieri will discuss the surprising story of this unlikely government program and its role in American life, the global story of migration, and how the promise of the American dream has been threatened by the United States’ embr ..read more

Gülay Türkmen is a cultural sociologist and a guest researcher at WZB Berlin Social Science Center. She is the author of Under the Banner of Islam? Turks, Kurds and the Limits of Religious Unity (Oxford University Press, 2021).  ..read more