Aykan Erdemir
Video: Turkey – A Hub for Illicit Finance
Turkish banks are taking a beating in American courts. Milestone rulings make it crystal clear that Turkey has a terrorism and illicit finance problem, and it could soon pay a steep price. They should also serve as a wakeup call for international financial institutions: banks may no longer be able to hide behind sovereign immunity. […]
COVID-19 and Erdogan’s Power Consolidation
Since the rise to power of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey in 2002, its leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used successive crises as pretexts to consolidate power that has facilitated his increasingly autocratic rule. From Turkish history’s biggest corruption scandal in December 2013 to a failed coup attempt in July 2016, […]
Northern Syria: A Small Withdrawal’s ‘Massive’ Effects (Audio)
America’s withdrawal of approximately 1,000 troops from northeast Syria is one of those quantitatively small events that will have a “massive” long-term effect on the Middle East and beyond. So, said Aykan Erdemir, a former member of the Turkish parliament and a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. On […]