Hazar Deniz Eker

Schalten Sie im Balkan den Fernseher ein, landen Sie garantiert binnen Sekunden bei einer türkischen Seifenoper. Die dizis, wie Seifenopern auf Türkisch heißen, eroberten 2010 mit Tausendundeine Nacht unsere Bildschirme – eine moderne Adaption des Märchens über eine verwitwete Mutter und ihre aufopf…

Scattered around all 81 Turkish provinces, foot soldiers of the Turkish health ministry hunt down unknowing civilians. Set up behind small pop-up stands with the obligatory Turkish flags waving above them, they lure in innocent pedestrians to… weigh them. The health ministry has set out to measure t…

Femicide 101 Groups like the We Will Stop Femicides Platform (WFP) had to start from the very beginning: femicides weren’t even called by their name just a few years ago. “They were ‘love murders’, ‘revenge murders’, ‘honour murders’ or ‘jealousy murders’,” Esin Izel Uysal of WFP tells The European …

<b>Tuesday, 18 March</b>. Today, the potential final days of Türkiye's already dwindling democracy started. It all began with an alleged bureaucratic mishap, barring Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's strongest opponent from challenging him in a presidential election. Ekrem İmamoğlu's bachelor's degree was inva…

Ekrem Imamoğlu is not just the mayor of Istanbul, a city whose population of 16 million surpasses that of many EU countries, he's also the opposition's best shot at ever defeating long-term president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. And: he's an avid collector of indictments. The fourth court proceeding agains…

A crime ring of doctors and medical personnel stands accused of executing a scam which killed at least 10 infants. A total of 21 suspects are in custody for transferring newborns from public to private hospitals. Patients receive higher payments by the Turkish Social Security Institution (SGK) for i…

What do you picture when you think of an electric vehicle (EV)? A luxurious car that is still only accessible to a small part of the European population? Pricetags upwards of € 100.000? God forbid, a cybertruck? EVs continue to be an expensive part of Europe's green transition, mostly used in the no…

A chain of protests erupted all over Türkiye following multiple femicides last week. Semih Celik murdered two 19-year-old women, Ikbal Uzuner and Ayşenur Çelik in Istanbul. In the same week, Aslan Uğur Araç murdered his partner Sonay Öztürk in the Southern city of Mersin, while Muhammed Işık murdere…

”EU competitiveness report” isn't the catchiest title for a groundbreaking manifesto. Still, the ideas and goals in the report are ambitious to say the least. Mario Draghi, the report's author and former European Central Bank president, proposes changes to the core of how the EU works, a shared resp…

Wildfire season is back, and the EU looks ready to react, but not to prevent it. Over the past few weeks, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Albania all received help through the rescEU emergency fleet and emergency services under the Civil Protection Mechanism. The mechanism calls on EU member …

A report by Amnesty International in collaboration with NGO Samos Volunteers lays out a systematic disregard for asylum seekers' well-being on the island. Thousands of people remained in the de facto detention center with lacking access to water, basic hygiene, and necessary medical services. Adrian…

Is enlargement a good idea, given the EU's current form? Enlargement is a must, and it should not be tomorrow; it should be today. It requires a political decision, creativity, and communication with citizens. Let me start with the communication aspect: many European leaders say that enlargement is …

448 million people live in the EU, which makes the upcoming European elections not only important, but diverse. We cannot avoid having different opinions on subjects that matter to all Europeans, but we can have a conversation. Europe Talks is a cross-border project that matches you with another Eur…

”Today is indeed a historic day” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after the Migration and Asylum Pact passed a much-anticipated vote in the European Parliament last week. She is not wrong, as the EU not only completely changed its migration management, but also lost any remnants of its…

Germany is on trial. The proceedings started last Monday, as Nicaragua brought Germany to the International Court of Justice in the Hague, alleging the European Union’s largest economy of “participation in the ongoing plausible genocide in the Gaza strip”. Nicaragua seeks to prosecute possible viol…

We were almost there. The Nature Restoration Law (NRL), legally binding member states to restore 90% of damaged ecosystems by 2050, was supposed to undergo its final approval in the European Council on Monday. In typical fashion for the legislation, everything changed at the last minute. The final v…