A Message From Turkey, a Nation Under Pressure<br />Before I left to begin reporting for The New York Times in Turkey — a nation strained by war, terrorist insurgencies, a refugee crisis<br />and a widening crackdown on dissent — Turkish diplomats in Washington sent me on my way with a velvet box.<br />They live in a place where everyday choices and even central points of identity — secular or pious, Turk or Kurd, citizen or refugee<br />— can at times identify individuals as either loyal to President Erdogan’s agenda, or as part of the mistrusted opposition.<br />Since then, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has lashed out, purging tens of thousands of perceived opponents<br />and coup plotters, firing or suspending about 130,000 government employees, and arresting more than 45,000 soldiers, police officers, teachers, politicians and journalists.<br />The country is battling two separate terrorism campaigns (one led by secular Kurds, the other by Islamic State extremists)<br />and two land wars (in southeast Turkey and northern Syria).<br />In a country where citizens disagree on even the most basic interpretation of Mr. Erdogan’s actions<br />— is he desperately defending a country under siege or cynically maneuvering to seize more power?<br />Inside, I found a small gray stone with a card that described it as "a symbol of Turkey’s devotion to democracy."<br />That stone was a chunk of the Turkish Parliament building — blasted free by a bomb dropped by coup plotters in the army last summer.<br />Please join me as I seek out the people and stories<br />that can lend insight into how this country is navigating a perilous moment in its history, and as I try to piece together a puzzle that keeps changing before our eyes.
