Essay

The Dreamers and Cynics of the New Turkey

A renowned director quietly probes life under Erdogan. August 8, 2025, 2:00 PM Comment icon View Comments ( )

A man with dark hair in glasses and a coat.

Over the past three decades—22 years of it under the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan—Turkey has transformed from a secular society searching for its spiritual identity to an increasingly self-confident, self-interested, and self-aggrandizing one. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s republican, Europeanizing, old Turkey has given way to what the governing party has christened “New Turkey.”

There has been no better chronicler of this transformation than Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The Turkish auteur, a longtime darling of the Cannes Film Festival, has never openly referenced politics in his films, but

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