You are listening to the war on the arts podcast on strategy defense and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of war on the rocks and I'm sitting here with two friends to talk about the recent first round of elections in Turkey. Please go ahead and introduce yourself.

My name is Nick Danforth. I'm an editor here at Orr on the Rocks.

Hi, I'm Jemera Pumuk. I'm a senior foreign policy reporter at Reuters covering US State Department.

And could you talk about your Turkey bona fides?

Yes, I'm Turkish and I've covered Turkey for many, many years.

I covered the total six elections, lots of explosions, a failed coup, Syrian migrant crisis. It's a long list.

I started out a PhD a few years ago, and by a few years ago I mean like a decade and a half ago now,

working on U.S. Turkish relations in the 1940s and 50s.

Since went on to cover U.S. Turkish relations today for a host of think tanks in DC

and then of course started at War on the Rocks.

I am in the least experienced on Turkey

of the group although I did start a PhD that I never finished or even got close to

finishing actually on US-Turkish relations in the Reagan and Carter and Reagan administrations.

So I'm more of a distant, slightly informed observer

as opposed to these two experts who are on the show with us.

And I think it's fair to say, puttering our own biases up front, the three of us are all pretty

disappointed with how the elections turned out in terms of no opposition victory either

for the presidency or in the parliament and it looks like when there is a

second round more than likely Erdogan is going to take it given the vote totals.

Is that fair to say all that?

Our disappointment and what's happened?

Well I'm a journalist so you know professionally I have no feelings towards how the

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