Angle, Anchor, and Voice

Interview with Michael Freeden: Democracy was ‘slow cooking’, this is ‘fast food’, unfiltered politics

A conversation with Prof. Michael Freeden on why ideology never stops adapting, and why we are moving from democratic to demotic societies.

Oct 1 • Ezgi Basaran

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September 2026

Update on the major issues: Hormuz, Houthis, Mecca Pact, Israel and Turkey

The rivalry between Israel and Turkey. The fading buffers behind Hormuz's muted oil shock. The older origins of the Mecca Pact, fuel protests in Syria…

Sep 24 • Ezgi Basaran

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August 2026

The New Spirit of Islamism + The Myth of a Transnational Brotherhood + Israel’s 'buffer zones'

The new issue of the Middle East Journal (MEJ) is just published.My essay and Courtney Freer's article make similar arguments about Islamism and its…

Aug 29 • Ezgi Basaran

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Turkey with Lebanon, what is it, what it is not + Israel’s Beiruti tycoon

Closer ties between Lebanon and Turkey have revived the question of who inherits Lebanon after Iran. Let's unpack what Turkey can and cannot do, plus…

Aug 19 • Ezgi Basaran

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Extraordinary weeks for the Kurds

From al-Sharaa's reception of the Kurds to Turkey's amnesty law, a fortnight that moved the Kurdish issue forward on several fronts at once.

Aug 12 • Ezgi Basaran

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The state of the Iraqi state

An awkward moment between the Iraqi PM and Turkey's president in Ankara laid bare how the Iraqi state is run, and how exposed it now is between Turkey…

Aug 5 • Ezgi Basaran

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July 2026

The Odysseus of Turkey's Opposition

Özgür Özel and his colleagues have left the party Atatürk founded to build a new one, one of the most consequential breakaways in Turkish political…

Jul 29 • Ezgi Basaran

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The role of the Kurds in the upended Middle East

With war resuming in Iran, let us look together at the clues now surfacing about the Kurds’ changing role in the Middle East.

Jul 22 • Ezgi Basaran

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Interview with Faisal Devji: Islam as an actor, an agent, a protagonist in history is dying.

I talked to Faisal Devji at Oxford about his arguments in his new book The Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam.

Jul 17 • Ezgi Basaran

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50:01

The Iranian Regime’s Best Enemy

The US-Israeli war on Iran was a godsend to a regime whose legitimacy was threadbare after the winter's protests. With the war resumed, what does the…

Jul 16 • Ezgi Basaran

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Extremely dangerous love of Mr Trump

Trump came to the NATO summit bearing gifts for Erdogan and contempt for everyone else. Their bond is personal, volatile, and dangerous at a moment when…

Jul 9 • Ezgi Basaran

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Turkey, NATO, and the Uses of Authoritarian Legitimacy

What Turkey wanted from NATO has changed, and so has what NATO is and represents. The 36th summit hosted in Ankara by a leader who jails his rivals…

Jul 2 • Ezgi Basaran

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