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Description: Turkey is experiencing arguably its darkest days since the 1980 coup d’état. Tens of thousands of people have been either arrested or dismissed from their posts on allegations of being associated with the failed coup attempt. President Erdogan appears bent on consolidating his one-man rule and encouraging anti-Western conspiracy theories to justify it. Meanwhile, from the stalled peace talks between the Turkish state and the Kurdish insurgency and multiple ISIS attacks in the country to economic slow-down and the Syrian refugee 'crisis,' Turkey's woes seem destined to grow. In discussion with journalist Amberin Zaman, we parse out these developments to offer some possible answers to an ever-pressing question: What's happening in Turkey?

Bio: Amberin Zaman is a public policy fellow in the Middle East and Global Europe Programs at the Woodrow Wilson Center. She covered Turkey and regional conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Azerbaijan for the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Voice America and The Daily Telegraph of London before becoming The Economist’s Turkey correspondent from 1999-2016. She is currently a columnist for the independent Turkish online news portal Diken and for Al Monitor’s Pulse of the Middle East. She authored the Wilson Center project “From Tribe to Nation: Iraqi Kurdistan on the Cusp of Statehood.”