2017 was a politically charged year for Turkey. On one hand, the tumult on the Turkish political scene started back in July 2016 after a failed coup attempt to topple the government of President Erdogan; the coup was heavily repressed and met with the arrest of thousands of suspects and with a purge that took the lives of 241 people and injured 2,914 others. On the other hand, the country rang the New Year 2017 with a deadly terrorist attack in a famous nightclub twhere an ISIS gunman killed 39 people and injured 70 others. Turkey has been involved in the Syrian civil war and launched “Operations Euphrates Shield” in late August 2016, in order to push away ISIS fighters from the country’s borders. However, Turkey’s involvement in Syria is also about fighting the Turkish-Kurdish rebels which have been leading a long fight for autonomy since the 80s.
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Turkey in 2017 Complex Geopolitics and Risks of an Overheating Economy