★ After falling ill the previous week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seems to have recovered somewhat. On May 4, he held a rally as part of his election campaign in the North Eastern Black Sea Giresun province, reported the daily Duvar.

  Addressing his supporters and referring to the rising cost of living, Mr. Erdoğan told the crowd: "I know you wouldn't sacrifice your leader for onions and potatoes."

  Although the Turkish Statistical Institute announced an annual inflation rate of 44 % in April, the independent institution ENAG Inflation Research Group reported the inflation rate as 105%.

  Some polls suggest that Mr. Erdoğan might lose office against his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the May 14 presidential election while citizens have been struggling to make ends meet due to unstoppable price hikes and a deteriorating economic crisis.

  In the rally, Mr. Erdoğan added: "Inflation is decreasing every month. It is down to 43 percent. It will continue to decrease each month."

  Mr. Erdoğan also criticized Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu's promise to increase the prices government offers to hazelnut producers. He said: "Where have you been until now?"

  The daily Duvar pointed out that Mr. Erdoğan, not Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu, was in power for the past 20 years and in charge of the economy.

  Mr. Erdoğan also asked Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu's allies Nationalist Good Party and Islamist Felicity Party voters: "How long will you be patient for Bye Bye Kemal's reckless suppression of all the values you believe in?"

  To fuel identity politics again, Mr. Erdoğan accused opposition parties of being pro-LGBTQ. "We are not pro-LGBTQ. We are against LGBTQ. The Republican People's Party is pro-LGBTQ, the Good Party is LGBTQ, and the Peoples' Democratic Party is pro-LGBTQ. Family is sacred to us."

 Read the full article >> here <<

★ Dr. Soner Çağaptay, the director of the Turkish research program at The Washington Institute, wrote an article in the Foreign Affairs magazine this week.

  In the article titled "Turkey's Resilient Autocrat," Dr. Çağaptay said the levers of the state and powerful friends could help Erdoğan win his toughest election.

  Here is a summary of his article:

  Mr. Erdoğan pulls the strings of the Turkish media through his powerful business cronies. He suppressed the discussion of the failures of his government in the aftermath of the devastating February earthquakes.

  Mr. Erdoğan also changed how parliament apportions seats, giving his party an advantage in the upcoming elections.

  Some key bureaucrats made state resources available to Mr. Erdoğan's party in the elections. Even the supposedly independent bodies such as courts and the Turkish electoral board take cues from Mr. Erdoğan.

  Over the years, Mr. Erdoğan relentlessly cracked down on the opposition and civil society activists.

  Like other authoritarian leaders elsewhere, Mr. Erdoğan uses his influence to engineer favorable electoral outcomes regardless of the stance of the opposition.

 Read the full article >> here <<

★ On May 4, New York Times carried an article titled "In Erdoğan's Turkey, a Building System Fatally Weakened by Corruption" by reporters Ceylan Yeginsu, Rebecca R. Ruiz, and Nimet Kirac.

  The article said some Turkish families got wealthy from a construction system rife with patronage.

  The authors investigated the circumstances in Turkey in the earthquake region. They found that the construction system prioritized speed over rules and technical expertise.

  There was also plenty of money to grease the wheels of corruption to get zoning approvals for projects without proper engineering. One building inspector said even after a project failed, a developer used political influence to open the doors.

  President Erdoğan used construction as a vessel for economic growth and a symbol of Turkey's progress.

  Turkish officials say 50,000 people died. However, experts say it is more like 200,000, and one expert claims nearly 500,000.

  The full article is >> here <<

  A similar article from the British daily The Guardian is >> here <<

★ Speaking of Mr. Erdoğan using state resources and the media, the opposition complains that TRT, Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, gives very little coverage to opposition leaders. They point out that taxpayers fund the TRT, and it should not favor any candidate.

  RTÜK is a board that monitors Turkish TV and radio broadcasts . On May 2, İlhan Taşçı and Tuncay Keser, two of its members from the main opposition Republican People's Party, released figures that confirm the opposition complaints, reports the dailiy Duvar.

  The two RTÜK members reported that TRT broadcasts aired Mr. Erdoğan's live election speeches for 32 hours in one month. However, it allocated only 32 minutes to rallies by Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu.

  It covered Devlet Bahçeli, an ally of Mr. Erdoğan and the Nationalist Movement party leader, for 25 hours, but the opposition Good Party leader Ms. Meral Akşener for only 10 minutes.

  Read the Duvar article >> here <<

★ Turkey's Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has targeted Dilek İmamoğlu, the wife of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, for making a victory sign during an opposition election rally in the eastern Van province and linked the victory sign to the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party, reports the daily Duvar.

  The daily Duvar wrote that it is a common tactic of the government to target the opposition with terror accusations to attract nationalist votes.

  Read the Duvar article >> here <<

★ According to Business Insider, Thursday, Russian and Ukrainian officials got into a fistfight at a conference in Turkey and had to be physically restrained.

  The most heated incident happened after a Russian official ripped a Ukrainian flag from a holster. Oleksandr Marikovski, a Ukrainian member of parliament, chased and punched the official and grabbed the flag back.

  A Turkish security official meekly said: "Please, no fighting" to the sides involved in the altercation.

★ Turkey's Constitutional Court has ruled for the second time that the Office of the Beyoğlu District in Istanbul violated the rights of a group called Saturday Mothers by banning their meetings.

  The groups have been gathering at a square since 1995 to protest the disappearances of their relatives, most likely killed by government security operatives.

  The ruling by the Constitutional Court came after the police detained Saturday Mothers for four weeks in a row despite the first ruling.

★ According to Deutsche Welle, a Turkish court on Wednesday handed pop singer Gulşen a 10-month suspended sentence after convicting her of inciting hatred and enmity over a joke about religious schools.

  Turkish authorities jailed Gulşen, whose full name is Gulşen Çolakoğlu, in August last year and later placed her under house arrest when she quipped that the perversion of one of her musicians came from attending a religious school.

  Gulşen uttered her comment on stage months earlier. But the prosecutors took legal action against her only when a video of it was republished by a pro-government daily in August, causing an uproar within President Erdoğan's conservative Justice and Development Party.

  The court in Istanbul found her guilty of the charge and initially sentenced her to one year in prison, state-owned Anatolia News Agency reported. But it later reduced the sentence, citing her "respectful stance" during the trial.

★ Şule Gazioğlu Art & Design opened the exhibition "Sebah & Joaillier: Eye of the Bosphorus." In the exhibition, collector Fabrizio Casaretto, the fifth-generation representative of the Joaillier family, brings together the photographs of the 19th-century Bosphorus from the family archive, gathered for 15 years.

Visitors will be able to reach the historical views of the Bosphorus in the 19th century and see a part of the archive of the Ottoman photography studio.

  Pascal Sebah (1823–1886) was a photographer in Istanbul. He was born there to a Syrian Catholic father and an Armenian mother. In 1857, in the Pera neighborhood of Istanbul, he opened his first photography studio El Chark Société Photographic. Later his son Jean (1872–1947), inherited the business.

  In 1888, Jean and Polycarpe Joaillier (1848–1904), a French photographer resident in Istanbul, became partners. The firm of Sebah &  Joaillier was named the official photographer of the Sultan, who requested them to take photographs across the Ottoman Empire.

  After Joaillier returned to Paris, Jean Sebah sold the business in 1908.

  The exhibition will be open until June 18.

  >> here <<

★ İş Sanat invited the listeners to a journey where jazz and traditional music met at İş Towers Hall on Friday, May 5, with the concert "Breath of Strings," the latest project of famous jazz double bass player Renaud Garcia-Fons. Strings Breathe, created by Fons with the successful names of traditional Turkish music, Serkan Halili (kanun) and Derya Türkan (classic kemençe), includes jazz and flamenco influences as well as Turkish music motifs.

★ Prepared by the Koç University Suna Kıraç Library team, the exhibition "Lighting the Future: Reconstruction of Higher Education in the Early Years of the Republic, 1923-1946" started.

  The exhibition venue is ANAMED, the University's Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations.

  The exhibition deals with the developments that laid the foundations of our understanding of education. It features documents and visuals from archives, including from Koç University Library.

   The exhibition also examines the steps taken to build the future of young Turkey during the initial years of the Republic. You can go to the exhibition until May 28.

★ "Notes from Above Ground III," a new exhibition by Ahmet Elhan, opened on May 3 at Evin Art Gallery in Istanbul. It is the second solo exhibition of the artist. While criticizing the concepts of modernity, the artist uses the collage method frequently preferred by modern artists of the 20th century and applies contrasting colors such as red and green together with a powerful expression, revealing the critical language that dominates the entire exhibition in an even more striking way.

★ Zorlu Children's Theater has been all over Turkey and put on the stage nearly 2,100 plays since 2003, bringing together close to 1 million children with theater. The theater was in the earthquake zone for children last week. The troupe staged the play "Amusement Park Planet," this time for earthquake-affected children.

★ Plant Factory, a vertical farming technology company, has set up its vertical farming facility in a shopping mall this time. The facility in İstinyePark will have an annual production volume of 900 thousand units.

  See the Plant Factory website >> here <<

★ Banyan Restaurant, which entered the 2023 Michelin recommendation list, celebrates its 20th anniversary. Banyan, which was opened in Nişantaşı in 2003 by Soul Group founding partners Aslı and Cem Pasinli as the first Asian fusion restaurant in Turkey and later moved to Ortaköy, will now host gastronomy enthusiasts with Turkish-Asian cuisine.

★ The flavors on the menu at Folks on Bağdat Street, where Far Eastern and Italian cuisine recipes are blended, are served with the touch and presentation of Chef Deniz Yılmaz. After dinner on Fridays and Saturdays, a different artist takes the stage every week.

★ Some archaeology news that appeared on the Turkish Archaeological News website:

  Still recovering from the disastrous earthquakes, Turkey is now preparing for possible disasters of this kind to hit the country in the future.

  Towards this goal, the Turkish press reported that restoration and strengthening works against possible earthquakes in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, which continued for about three years, ended in April 2023.

  Also, nearly 400 artifacts from the Hatay Archaeology Museum, some of which got damaged during the Kahramanmaraş-centered earthquakes in February, were sent to the Kırşehir Museum for protection against aftershocks.

  On a brighter note, the past month saw the return of the artifacts smuggled over the years from the country. For instance, the Met Museum returned looted antiquities, while the Antalya Archaeology Museum opened an exhibition displaying a section of 12 smuggled historical artifacts the U. S. returned to Turkey.

  Moreover, efforts are underway to return the head of the life-size bronze statue of Roman Emperor Septimius Severus from Denmark.

  The U. S. authorities returned the body of the statue already.

  Finally, Italy returned to Turkish authorities a funerary stele, dating from the 2nd century CE and carrying a loving inscription to the spouse of the dead woman, after an investigation determined that smugglers illegally excavated it in Zeugma in southeastern Turkey.

  See the original with more news >> here <<

Ankara, in central Turkey        : 70/46 Showers
Antalya, on the Mediterranean    : 72/59 Partly Cloudy
Erzurum, in Eastern Turkey       : 57/37 Showers
Istanbul, in northwestern Turkey : 66/52 Mostly Cloudy
Izmir, on the Aegean             : 77/57 Partly Cloudy
Trabzon, on the Black Sea        : 59/54 Showers

Adana           -      Alanya  	      4 - 2
Antalya         -      Beşiktaş       1 - 3
Konya           -      Kayseri        2 - 2
Giresun         -      Fenerbahçe     1 - 1
Ümrani̇ye        -      Sivas          4 - 1
Hatay           -      Istanbul       0 - 3
G. Antep        -      K.gümrük       0 - 3
G. Saray        -      Başakşehir       -
Trabzon         -      Ankaragücü       -

 1 - G. Saray        70
 2 - Fenerbahçe      68
 3 - Beşiktaş        68
 4 - Adana           60
 5 - Başakşehir      51
 6 - Kayseri         49
 7 - Konya           46
 8 - Trabzon         45
 9 - K.gümrük        44
10 - Alanya          38
11 - Sivas           37
12 - Antalya         36
13 - Ankaragücü      35
14 - Istanbul        35
15 - Kasımpaşa       34
16 - Giresun         28
17 - Ümrani̇ye        26
18 - G. Antep        25
19 - Hatay           23