Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AK Party) turned 18 earlier this week. In power for 17 consecutive years under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's leadership, it has arguably outperformed all other movements in the multiparty era.

Tensions between Turkey and the United States de-escalated thanks to a recent agreement on the proposed safe zone in Syria. If Washington sticks to the deal, joint steps could follow in Syria and Iraq.

The Istanbul rerun election fueled new developments in Turkish politics. There is an ongoing discussion on a range of issues including the presidential system and the prospect of new political parties. The newfound "self-confidence" of Kurdish nationalists deserves particular attention in this context. The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) takes credit for the Republican People's Party's (CHP) success in the March 31 and June 23 elections. As a matter of fact, it dates its influence back to the June 2018 elections.

Building on its victory in the rerun Istanbul mayoral elections, Turkey's opposition just launched its campaign to reverse the country's transition to the presidential system. Their current effort is a prelude to a pending call for early elections.

Both Istanbul mayoral candidates devised new campaign strategies and reoriented their election discourses to attract new voters in the critical elections rerun

Some words are capable of designating more than what they seem to mean. The word alliance, which has become a cornerstone of Turkish politics in recent months, is one such example. In the wake of the July 2016 resistance and Turkey's transition to a presidential system, the ability to form and maintain alliances emerged as a key skill in the political arena.

Verbal attacks by Kılıçdaroğlu and Good Party (İP) Chairwoman Meral Akşener against Syrian refugees on the campaign trail demonstrated their lack of interest in governing. At the time, their remarks were dismissed as a case of election-season populism.

Although the recount of some ballots in Istanbul is ongoing, analysts have started to discuss the outcome of the local elections that took place in Turkey on Sunday. It will be hard to summarize the potential outcomes of the elections and their meaning but here are some critical points.

Turkey will hold municipal elections tomorrow. The People's Alliance and the Nation Alliance have worked very hard to win over undecided voters and maximize turnout.

If the People's Alliance succeeds in the elections, the AK Party and the MHP may deepen their ties and continue to institutionalize the new political system, buoyed by this enthusiasm

This analysis explains the March 2019 local election’s significance to Turkish politics and concentrates on the ways in which the visions of various political parties for local government have changed over the years.

Local elections in Turkey are taking on the character of general elections as foreign policy comes to dominate the conversation.

The final two weeks of any election campaign fuels the momentum that settles the score. Leaders and candidates, therefore, put their best foot forward in the final days before the election. Turkey finds itself at that very spot now. The municipal election is just 10 days away.

As expected, the municipal election campaign in Turkey has ended up bogged down in national issues.

It has been awhile since political parties in Turkey began preparations for the upcoming local elections. Indeed, they had already been focusing on implementing a new approach to broaden their appeal before the snap election decision.

As Turkey inches toward the municipal elections, the "national survival" debate is deepening with new wars of words between competing definitions of nationalism.

Ahead of this month's municipal elections, the main ideological debate in Turkey revolves around the question of national survival.