Oktay Yılmaz

Born in 1969. I took my undergraduate degree at Al-Azhar University in Egypt and my master's at Marmara University's Institute of Middle East Studies. For a period I served as Director of News and Programming at TRT Arabi.

For more than thirty years I have written news analysis across national and international broadcast and print media, working as a political analyst and news commentator. I speak Arabic fluently and English at an intermediate level.

One question sits at the centre of everything published here: why was a decision taken, and how consistent is the reasoning behind it?

Most debate in international affairs and politics runs on outcomes. But what makes an outcome meaningful is the frame the decision was made in — which objective was prioritised, which option was dropped, which assumption was treated as valid. The analysis on this site tries to make that frame visible.

Three principles guide the writing:

• Show the method. Source, period and definition are always stated.
• Do not hide uncertainty. The margin of error matters as much as the estimate.
• Write about being wrong. When an outcome differs, the assumption that failed is examined separately.

Pieces are written in Turkish; English and Arabic versions are produced through machine translation and clearly marked as such on the page.