Justice System and Everyday Life in Türkiye
🌱 The Last Ember Falls to Earth and With It, Spring Is Nearly Here
The third and final “cemre” a folk calendar tradition in Anatolia marking the gradual warming of nature ahead of spring is believed to have fallen to the earth today, following the first cemre’s descent into the air on 19-20 February and the second into water on 26-27 February. The word cemre, meaning ember or glowing coal, refers to a sequence of warmth thought to pass through the air, water, and soil at weekly intervals, signalling the end of winter. Long embedded in Turkish rural life, the tradition carries practical significance beyond the symbolic: the earth cemre is taken as a sign that livestock can soon return to pasture and that the soil is ready to be worked, marking the effective start of the farming and herding season across Anatolia.
Editor’s note: In Turkish folklore, the three cemres are embers sent by a genie, falling from the heavens one by one to warm the world back to life — first the air around 20 February, then the water a week later, melting snow and ice, and finally the frozen earth a week after that. Today’s third cemre completes the sequence, and with it, winter is considered well and truly over.
⚖️ Turkey Designates Specialist Courts for Privatisation, Expropriation and Environmental Cases
Turkey’s Justice Minister Akın Gürlek has announced that certain categories of administrative case will henceforth be heard exclusively by designated specialist courts, following a decision by the First Chamber of the Council of Judges and Prosecutors published in the Official Gazette. The case types affected include urgent expropriation proceedings, decisions of the Privatisation High Council, land sales and allocations under the Tourism Incentive Law, and disputes arising from environmental impact assessment rulings under the Environment Law. Gürlek said the reform was intended to make the judiciary faster and more efficient, arguing that concentrating similar cases in the same courts would accelerate proceedings and ensure greater consistency between rulings.
⚖️ Judges and Prosecutors Who Ran Ergenekon Trials Go on Trial Themselves for Fabricating Evidence
Eleven former judges and prosecutors who presided over the Ergenekon cases — in which hundreds of people, predominantly military figures, were convicted of terrorism offences on the basis of what are now alleged to have been fabricated evidence — have appeared before Antalya’s 3rd Heavy Criminal Court in the opening hearing of their own trial on charges of acting within the hierarchy of the Gülenist FETÖ network. Six of the eleven defendants are fugitives, three are in custody, and two are being tried without remand; the group includes Zekeriya Öz, the fugitive prosecutor who became one of the most prominent figures in the original Ergenekon prosecutions. At the hearing, a victim of the Ergenekon trials, Muammer Karabulut, requested that the two defendants currently at liberty also be remanded in custody, a decision that will ultimately rest with the Court of Cassation.
Politics
💸 Turkey’s Public Consultancy Bill Hit 19.3 Billion Lira in Five Years — and Rose 72% in 2025 Alone
Turkish public institutions spent 19.3 billion lira on consultancy services between 2021 and 2025, with the annual figure rising sharply each year — from 625 million lira in 2021 to 8.5 billion lira in 2025, a 72 per cent increase on the previous year, according to data from the Public Procurement Authority. The figures have drawn renewed attention following a Court of Auditors finding that public bodies were routinely hiring outside consultants even for work that could be handled by their own staff. The cumulative spending breaks down as 1.6 billion lira in 2022, 3.7 billion in 2023, and 4.9 billion in 2024, before the steep jump to 8.5 billion last year.
👶 Turkey to Ban Under-15s From Social Media and Extend Parental Leave Under New Bill
Turkey’s Minister of Family and Social Services, Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş, has announced that a legislative package submitted to parliament by AKP MPs will introduce social media restrictions for children under 15, extend maternity and paternity leave entitlements, and create a new dedicated leave provision for foster carers. The minister described the bill as a further step towards the government’s “Family and Population Decade” vision, and said the measures were designed to strengthen families, protect children, and support parents. The legislation has been formally submitted to the Grand National Assembly and is now entering the parliamentary process.
Parliament
📋 Turkey’s Tax and Military Omnibus Bill Clears Parliamentary Committee With Several Last-Minute Changes
The sweeping omnibus bill introduced by the AKP earlier this week has been approved by the Grand National Assembly’s Plan and Budget Committee, advancing legislation that will bring cryptocurrency gains into the income tax framework, impose a transaction tax on crypto trades, raise the fee for purchasing exemption from military service with proceeds directed to the Defence Industry Fund, end the tax deductibility of gambling and betting advertising expenditure, remove the corporate tax exemption enjoyed by foundation university hospitals, and bring certain precious stones within the scope of special consumption tax. A discount on lump-sum payments will also be offered to earthquake victims in the regions affected by the February 2023 disasters, and surplus public properties will be made available for privatisation under the existing Privatisation Law. Notably, the committee removed the original Article 8, which would have converted full VAT exemptions to partial ones for deliveries to the Red Crescent, housing sales to foreigners, and certain health services — a significant climbdown from the original draft. Several other amendments were made during the committee stage, including the removal of a clause relating to residential rental VAT exemptions and the addition of new provisions extending income and corporate tax exemptions for manufacturers operating in free trade zones, backdated to 1 January 2026.
Ruling Government (AKP, MHP and DEM coalition aka People’s Alliance)
🍽️ Parliament’s Ramadan Dinner Menu Causes a Stir — AKP Deputy Says She’d Be Happy With Bread and Cheese
The parliamentary iftar dinner hosted by speaker Numan Kurtulmuş has sparked a secondary controversy over its menu, which featured artichoke with caramelised onions and avocado, stuffed meatballs, crispy pastry, green salad with strawberries and pomegranate, beef entrecôte on a bed of keşkek, walnut and pomegranate güllaç, and ginger sumac sherbet — prompting widespread public criticism that the spread was wholly out of touch with the economic hardship faced by ordinary Turkish households. AKP deputy group chair Özlem Zengin responded during a parliamentary session, saying the food had been prepared by the assembly’s own kitchen staff and dismissing the controversy, declaring “we are fine breaking our fast with water if need be” and “we’d be perfectly happy with bread, cheese and tea this evening.” She also urged critics to stop making comments that she said diminished the dignity of parliament and harmed Turkey’s image. The dinner itself was already politically charged, having been attended by President Erdoğan but boycotted by CHP, İYİ Party, and several other opposition leaders.
🕊️ Kurdish Peace Process Hits a Chicken-and-Egg Impasse: Disarm First, or Pass Laws First?
Turkey’s Kurdish reconciliation process, operating under the government’s “Terror-Free Turkey” banner, has reached a critical methodological impasse in Ankara, with the ruling AKP and the pro-Kurdish DEM Party at odds over sequencing. According to political sources, the AKP insists that the PKK must first make a concrete and verifiable start to disarmament before any legislative steps can be taken, with the party drawing on the bitter experience of the previous failed peace process as justification for caution. DEM Party figures, by contrast, are pressing for legal guarantees and a formal political framework to be established in parliament first, arguing that the process cannot advance without them. A joint parliamentary commission report has identified disarmament as the critical threshold, proposing that the defence ministry and national intelligence agency monitor and verify progress on the ground before legislation is triggered. Ankara insiders say DEM Party sources are pushing for meaningful progress before the end of Ramadan, whilst President Erdoğan is said to have signalled that any legislative movement is unlikely before Ramadan concludes — suggesting the process may remain in a holding pattern for several more weeks.
Opposition Parties (CHP and others)
🗣️ Jailed İmamoğlu Breaks New Ground Ahead of Trial: ‘I’d Back Another Candidate If That’s What Democracy Requires’
Ekrem İmamoğlu, the imprisoned Istanbul mayor and CHP presidential candidate, has given his most candid public statement yet ahead of the opening of his trial on 9 March, telling BBC Turkish that he would support a different candidate if that were the most effective path to protecting Turkish democracy — but warning in the same breath that simply replacing him with another name would send entirely the wrong signal, since whoever succeeded him could face the same judicial treatment. İmamoğlu, who was arrested in March 2025 and removed from office on corruption charges he describes as a political stitch-up, said he was preparing not merely a legal defence but a sweeping political indictment of what he called years of damage done to Turkey, which he intends to lay before “the court of the nation’s conscience.” He described his candidacy as a matter not of personal ambition but of whether Turkey remains a democracy in which governments can change through elections, and questioned whether MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli’s recent calls for a fair trial were sincere or merely designed to confuse the public. On the Kurdish peace process, he said he was satisfied with neither the stage the process had reached nor the content of the parliamentary commission’s report.