stuart.williams

The numbing predictability of the Istanbul tragedy

18 January 2016

"It’s conventional after attacks to express surprise and shock," writes Stuart Williams, AFP's Istanbul-based deputy bureau chief in Turkey.

"But when a suicide bomber ripped through a group of German tourists on a morning last week in central Istanbul the shock was genuine, but no-one could feign surprise. This was the attack that everyone had feared."

Turkey and Russia: still uneasy after all these years

3 December 2015

The current spat between Moscow and Ankara over the shooting down of a Russian plane is just the latest manifestation of the uneasy relationship between two former empires, which have spent much of the last half millenium at war, writes AFP's Istanbul deputy bureau chief Stuart Williams.

A tale of two strongmen

5 June 2015

"I arrived in Turkey just under a year ago expecting something very different from what I experienced during five years in Putin’s Russia," writes AFP's Stuart Williams. "The differences between Turkey’s genuinely democratic and Russia’s more authoritarian political systems are very real. But the more time I spend in Turkey, the more I am struck by the growing similarities between Turkey and Russia in the early part of the 21st century, parallels that are fascinating but also very troubling. They have become all the more telling in the run up to June 7 parliamentary elections."

Seeking the soul of Istanbul on the Bosphorus

10 April 2015

"It’s commonplace among Istanbul residents to complain about the pace of change in the city," writes AFP journalist Stuart Williams. "Too much unchecked construction, too much traffic, too many new infrastructure projects, people say. Yet everyone still knows a place that for them is the soul of the city. For me, the easiest way to feel the soul of Istanbul is on the water. On one of the commuter ferries that ply their way on the Bosphorus."

Rare moment in spotlight for Romania’s Saxons

20 November 2014

"Likely it was news to many that there even is an ethnic German minority in Romania", writes Stuart Williams, an AFP reporter now based in Istanbul. "A community that proudly dates back its history to the twelfth century, that once numbered hundreds of thousands of people and for long defiantly held onto traditions that had evaporated elsewhere."

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Stuart Williams

The numbing predictability of the Istanbul tragedy

Turkey and Russia: still uneasy after all these years

A tale of two strongmen

Seeking the soul of Istanbul on the Bosphorus

Rare moment in spotlight for Romania’s Saxons

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