Murat Belge

Murat Belge is editor of Iletisim Publishing House and Yeni Gündem and is Head of the Department of Comparative Literature at Bilgi University.

Turkey’s presidential dictatorship

Re-converting Ayasofya takes a major symbolic step towards the President’s ideal goal of an Islamised one-party state.

By Murat Belge

/ 22 Jul 2020

Turkish winners matter for debate, loser certain

The really important issue for AKP is to come to a decision about party policy. Do they endorse the Erdoğan style of "making politics"?

By Murat Belge

/ 1 Jul 2015

Reading Ahmet Davutoğlu's comments

President Erdoğan, no doubt, sees this as the culmination of an Islamic administrative system—a system which, during the brief periods it worked, could be considered "democratic", in the 8th or 9th century.

By Murat Belge

/ 4 Feb 2015

The trials of free speech in Turkey

Five newspaper columnists go on trial in Istanbul tomorrow, 7 February, charged with insulting Turkey's judiciary and trying to influence the course of an ongoing case. I am

By Murat Belge

/ 6 Feb 2006

Love me, or leave me?; The strange case of Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk, one of Turkeys most respected and critically acclaimed authors, will appear on trial on 16 December. He is charged with publicly denigrating Turkish identity, following an interview

By Murat Belge

/ 17 Oct 2005

Between Turkey and Europe: why friendship is welcome

Everything for the people, nothing by the people originally the maxim of the Spanish king could easily have been the one for Turkish modernisers in the first half of the

By Murat Belge

/ 15 Dec 2004

Bombs on Istanbul

After the bombing of the two synagogues in Istanbul on 15 November 2003, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declaimed against the attack in bombastic style. If this were

By Murat Belge

/ 27 Nov 2003

The Turkish refusal

The campaign to force regime change upon Iraq led by the United States found and then left Turkey in a new situation. The most interesting fact about it is the

By Murat Belge

/ 20 May 2003

Turkey  normal at last?

Linking Europe, Asia and the Middle East secular yet Muslim the fate of Turkey could hardly be more important in our new epoch of war on terror and clash of

By Murat Belge

/ 7 Nov 2002

Radical Islam and 9/11: inside the fundamentalist mind

This story - of spectacle, inferiorism, and abstract totalising - marks a phenomenon of acute intellectual regression in which both the west and the Islamic societies are implicated.

By Murat Belge

/ 3 Oct 2001