Nick Ashdown
@nickashdown.bsky.social
Canadian journalist/writer in Brussels writing mostly about Turkey. New Lines Magazine, LA Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Policy, Globe & Mail, etc. Selected clippings: https://nickashdown.weebly.com/selected-published-works
Great investigation into how media outlets in Brussels hold sponsored events that are essentially lobbying platforms. "some newsroom staff expressed vocal discomfort at seeing oil companies sponsor sustainability-related debates."
Pay-to-play in Brussels: How media events became the new lobbying frontier | Euractiv
Dinners, roundtables and conferences have long been a feature of lobbying culture. What is changing is who organises them
euractiv.com
About to be hit with the fourth heatwave so far. Tomorrow will be 34 degrees, which is gonna suck for the 96% of Bruxellois who don't have AC. Why do only 4% of people here have AC? Because before this summer, most years had 4-6 days/year above 30 degrees. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/w...
Europe Is Heating Up Again This Week. Here’s What to Know.
A new heat wave is forecast to hit the continent, piling the pressure on countries that are already fighting deadly wildfires that have forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate.
nytimes.com
These images of First Nations community members evacuating Collins, Ontario on motorboats are absolutely surreal www.facebook.com/reel/1548244...
Luke LeBrun@lukelebrun.ca · 3w agoThese photos of FNs community members fleeing their homes by boat are genuinely apocalyptic (Photo via Wayne Wastaken of Collins, Ontario, who says his “hometown is gone”) www.facebook.com/share/r/1ArN...
iPhone doesn’t do justice to the rust-coloured haze over Toronto, or the stench. I was fine in an N95. Birds were having a bona fide party in an utterly deserted Home Smith Park. Thinking about my impassioned speech in elementary school arguing for the swift implementation of the Kyoto accords.
Someone on X wrote that you can't trust that Levent is innocent, you can't conclude he's guilty based on what the judiciary says, and you can't believe what journalists write about it, which about sums it up.
bianet English@bianet-eng.bsky.social · 3w agoTurkey detains rock singer running charity over alleged multi-million-dollar fraud Haluk Levent became particularly prominent during the 2023 earthquakes, after which he raised around 150 million US dollars worth of funds. He is now accused of misusing these donations. bianet.org/haber/turkey...
I really think one day historians will study this Wall Street Journal article the way today's historians study texts from the last days of Rome.
European Soccer Fans Marvel at the Splendor of America’s Suburbs
Dutch fans in Missouri see a nation that is risky and expensive, but vast and bountiful.
wsj.com
It’s just a reminder: no Turkish pilot finished the F-35 B course so even if there is a breakthrough on the orphaned six jets, no one is around to fly them home. They’ll be staying put. When this began TuRAF had begun the B course at Luke and maintainers were at Eglin. They got sent home.
It's strange.... I'm actually meeting more random people who personally know someone who has been prosecuted... not just dissidents and journalists I don't think it's just raw numbers. I think it is also an expanding set of *classes* of people the government is willing to prosecute
Bilge Yesil@bilgeyesil.bsky.social · 4w agoRemember the political prisoners languishing in jails and millions of ppl crushed under economic crisis as you watch NATO leaders receiving a grand Ottoman greeting at Erdogan’s 1000-room palace
The language about Turkey and F-35 is often muddled. Precision is important: 1) a Turkey was a tier 3 partner in the JSF consortium, meaning it had $12 billion in contracts for part production and could sell weapons that were built for integration (SOM-J). It paid $125 million for this & then
But my favorite part was when Cavusoglu claimed that the Russia-Ukraine talks in 2022 were close to a ceasefire, but that "some NATO allies" wanted to keep the war going and sabotaged them. He specifically blamed Biden for trying to bleed Russia.
Same event: Europeans, U.S. were talking up the danger of Russia. Cavusoglu never mentioned Russia as a security threat. That said a lot.
It was on at 2:00 am here so didn't watch (sure heard cheering through the open windows though), but what wonderful news to wake up to. Sorry American friends, but you can't imagine how much the world needed you to lose hard.
Belgian Red Devils@belreddevils.bsky.social · 4w agoOverturn this! 😎
Topics I don't touch with a ten foot pole while in Turkey...
Diego Cupolo@diegocupolo.bsky.social · last mo.Turkish respondents' view of NATO in 2026: 59% Unfavorable │ 27% Favorable View on Russia: 49% Unfavorable │ 47% Favorable Confidence in Putin: 55% No │ 39% Yes Confidence in Zelenskyy: 70% No │ 21% Yes New @pewresearch.org survey: www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/...
This one shouldn't be too awful, but it'll be the *third* heatwave of the season, and it's barely July.
The Brussels Times@brusselstimes.com · last mo.A new heatwave is highly likely in Belgium – although temperatures are expected to remain lower than during the previous one.
Another wave of arrests of Turkish journalists and civil society activists deemed critical ahead of NATO summit t24.com.tr/gundem/t24-d...
NATO Zirvesi öncesi yeni operasyon; T24 dış haberler editörü Buse Söğütlü, Oda TV editörü Ceren Erdoğdu, avukatlar, akademisyenler ve STK üyeleri gözaltında | T24
NATO Zirvesi öncesi yeni operasyon; T24 dış haberler editörü Buse Söğütlü, Oda TV editörü Ceren Erdoğdu, avukatlar, akademisyenler ve STK üyeleri gözaltında
t24.com.tr
At some point, Europe is just going to have to acknowledge that it's already at war with Russia. They set the UK PM's house on fire. They tried to kill the head of the most important arms company. They tried to blow up civilian flights. They burned down a huge mall in Poland.
Russia likely used shadow ships to wage a drone campaign in Europe, report says
According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies think tank, Russia likely used shadow ships to launch drones over Europe, surveilling military sites and repeatedly disrupted civilian avi...
apnews.com
Turkey quietly makes a huge move towards integrating its Syrian population via @turkeyrecap.bsky.social
"A decade ago, Erdoğan invited Nato to hold its 2018 gathering in Istanbul, a proposal that it was widely assumed would be accepted. But those plans were blocked by a dozen European allies over concerns about Turkish democratic backsliding."
Turkey’s defence industry is booming. Europe is in its sights
EU countries are uneasy about Erdoğan’s growing authoritarianism. But they want his country’s hard power
ft.com
I had an interesting conversation with friends in Dersim a couple years ago where they explained in detail why they hate Kılıçdaroğlu.
T24@t24.com.tr · last mo.📢 Kılıçdaroğlu’na memleketi Tunceli’de tepki 🎙️ İl Başkanlığı görevinden alınan Gündoğan: Buyursunlar Tunceli’ye gelsinler, halkın yüzüne bakarak siyaset yapsınlar Video Haber 📺👇 t24.com.tr/video/kilicd...
Popular Turkish comedian Deniz Göktaş taken into custody after he poked fun at Erdoğan in his latest special, joking that Erdoğan discovered self development coaches online that gave him the confidence to transition from a "shy dictator" to one at peace with who he is (it's very funny).
Yurt dışından dönen komedyen Deniz Göktaş, havaalanında gözaltına alındı! | T24
Yurt dışından dönen komedyen Deniz Göktaş, havaalanında gözaltına alındı!
t24.com.tr
After journalists from @eurcorrespond.bsky.social tried to ask the US ambassador a question, the Americans told the Brussels police to remove the journalists because they were an "active threat" and the ambassador said "both of you are losers."
The Brussels Times@brusselstimes.com · last mo.I wrote a follow-up post with some reflections here, talking about Turkey's egalitarian/communitarian 'kolay gelsin' culture, in stark contrast to the inequality and elitism I wrote about in the first essay. open.substack.com/pub/nickashd...
Nick Ashdown@nickashdown.bsky.social · 2mo agoI wrote a guest post for @selimkoru.bsky.social's great Kültürkampf Substack, inspired by the lively discussion around my viral thread on X from a few months ago. I'm most interested not in the anecdote in the thread, but the huge response to it. It's a slippery subject, but I hope I did it justice.
I wrote a follow-up post with some reflections here, talking about Turkey's egalitarian/communitarian 'kolay gelsin' culture, in stark contrast to the inequality and elitism I wrote about in the first essay. open.substack.com/pub/nickashd...
Nick Ashdown@nickashdown.bsky.social · 2mo agoI wrote a guest post for @selimkoru.bsky.social's great Kültürkampf Substack, inspired by the lively discussion around my viral thread on X from a few months ago. I'm most interested not in the anecdote in the thread, but the huge response to it. It's a slippery subject, but I hope I did it justice.
An Ankara court formally arrested 103 people, including an academic, a journalist, lawyers, environmentalists and students ahead of the NATO summit next month. Prosecutors claimed they could "carry out attacks to portray Turkey as a country associated with terrorism." bianet.org/haber/ankara...
Ankara court remands over 100 including academic, journalist ahead of NATO summit
Prosecutors claimed the detained individuals could "carry out attacks in an effort to portray Turkey as a country associated with terrorism."
bianet.org
Absolute shit storm right now about NATO denying press accreditations to non-regime supporting Turkish journalists, but you're not gonna see it on this platform...
Just came across this typical sentence: "...an award-winning social purpose media organization that equips changemakers with the insights they need to drive impact." I doubt it was even written by AI; this is how NGO (but also corporate & gov) people have written for decades.
Nick Ashdown@nickashdown.bsky.social · 5mo agoI really think all the bad habits of LLMs come directly from the human-written text they've been trained on. Yes, the false profundity of bad writing like Seva points out, but also the hollow platitudes of corporate-speak, PR-speak, therapy-speak, positivity-speak, social media-speak.
It's time. "On a sunny summer day at noon, only about 10% of Spain’s electricity comes from fossil fuels; around half comes from solar. Portugal does just as well, and France better still."
Europeans should learn to love the air-conditioner
Green electricity means never having to say sorry for lowering the thermostat
economist.com
Recent post from a Turkish leftist newspaper:
Çağdaş Üngör@cagdasungor.bsky.social · last mo.Only 3 out of 10 people in Turkey has a favorable opinion of NATO. It's one of the smallest ratings among NATO member countries. Ankara Summit, with all its excessive measures, is likely to reduce it further... www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/...
