Andrew Finkel

Journalist

Andrew Finkel has been a journalist based in Turkey since 1989, during which time he has corresponded for a variety of print and broadcast media including The Times, The Economist, TIME, and CNN. More unusually, he has worked in the Turkish language press both in the newsroom and as a featured columnist. He was a recent regular contributor to the Latitude section of the international edition of The New York Times, and his freelance articles and editorials have appeared in many publications including The Guardian, The Observer, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times and Le Monde Diplomatique. He is also the contributing editor and restaurant critic of Cornucopia Magazine. Finkel is a founder of P24, an Istanbul-registered NGO whose mission is to strengthen the integrity of independent media in Turkey. He is the author of Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press.

Erdogan comes in first, but how about Turkey?

For an orator skilled in working the crowd and after a night of triumph, Turkey’s newly re-elected president was surprisingly downbeat. “I won. Get over it,” was the body language as to issue a warning against sour grapes. “I hope nobody will try to cast a shadow on the results and harm democracy in order […]

Turkey’s elections, emergency rule and reading the runes

Istanbul: We look at the polls. We look at the runes (not tea leaves in our case but the grounds in cups of Turkish coffee). We even talk to taxi drivers. Turkey goes to the ballot box this Sunday (24 June) and to many the stakes are nothing short of the future of the country’s […]

A falling lira – one bluff Turkey may not be able to call

Incompetence doesn’t really matter. Until it does. The quality of democratic institutions doesn’t really affect international investment. Until it does– that is until the wheels of government institutions become so sticky and clogged that they threaten to come of their axles altogether.

Don’t cry for me, Turkish media

For those of us once laboured in the bowels of Turkey’s legacy media, the sale of the country’s largest print and television group has sent a shiver of Schadenfreude down our spines. It is, as we old duffers like to say, “the end of an era,” although in our franker moments we confess that era was far from […]