Arda Tunca

A war intended to weaken Iran is instead changing how power operates in the region. The current conflict in the Middle East is widely framed as an effort to weaken Iran. Yet the emerging evidence points in a different direction. The war is reshaping the structure of power in the region. It is not strengthening Iran in a conventional sense. It is increasing its leverage within a system that has become highly sensitive to disruption. Power is often understood in terms of military capacity or...

I went to Bodrum Castle . I wanted to find out how long a stone on which I had written an article  would remain on display. Inside the castle, there was a poster stating that the exhibition titled “ Inflation and Purchasing Power in Antiquity ” would end on December 21, 2026. Therefore, my question was simple but important: Was this stone part of the exhibition, and would it be removed along with it? The search for an answer revealed a situation far more striking than the question itself. The...

Introduction The history of Halicarnassus is often approached through its later prominence as a dynastic capital  under the Hecatomnids and as a key site in Alexander the Great’s campaign. Such a perspective, however, risks projecting the characteristics of a fourth-century BCE urban center backward onto a much earlier and structurally different landscape. Before the rise of Halicarnassus as a political capital, the peninsula  belonged to a decentralized regional system shaped by dispersed...