Now every war on the rocks podcast is special but this one is the first one that we've recorded in Istanbul

And you know a few of us just ended up here for a conference and we thought we'd do a podcast so here I have Josh

Walker from the German Marshall fun. What's going on? Josh say hi.

Madamanas? We have Aaron Stein from Ruse.

Hello?

We have Apshaunostovar from the Center for Naval Analysis.

Hello.

And we're all sitting here at the Surah Hotel in Sultanamat, and we're going to talk about the Middle East and solve all of its problems tonight.

First, let's talk about the elections that are coming up in Turkey on June 7.

There's a lot at stake in these elections.

Josh, why don't you walk us through what's at stake?

Yeah, I mean, I feel like a broken record every single time we've talked over the last 13 years about another election and how important it is.

I think as a turkey watcher, you get right into the minutia of the details and of the percentages and I think like another

election coming up soon the British election you follow the polls very

carefully but unlike the British elections Turkish polls are notoriously bad at predicting things because depending on which

polling company you go with you get different results.

Clearly the ruling party, the Justice and Development Party, the AKP, is going to take a majority.

The only question is by how much and the other major

storyline here is not about the secular opposition party or the nationalist

opposition party, the MHP or CHP, it's about the Kurds, HDP. Will they cross the 10% threshold?

Turkey is one of the highest thresholds of any parliamentary system.

The question is, if they don't pass that threshold,

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