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Do Friends Really Have Choices When One of Them Needs the Other?

Friendship is usually described as one of the freest relationships we have. We do not choose our parents. We rarely choose our relatives. We enter workplaces, schools, cities, and institutions in which many of our relationships are determined partly by circumstance. Friendship appears different. Two people remain friends because they continue choosing each other. There is usually no contract requiring them to stay, no law preventing them from leaving, and no formal institut

Deniz Dede

Persona Non Grata as a Political Threat

The term "persona non grata" can be seen in various news articles related to politics, both internal and external. But what does that mean? How does a person can be defined as "non grata"? The term "Persona Non Grata" is a key concept in diplomacy and international relations. It signals that a foreign diplomat or official is no longer welcome in a host country and they must leave immediately if they are present in the country. Though rooted in diplomatic language, it has f

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The Night Hungary Changed: What Orbán's Fall Means for Europe

Sixteen years. Four consecutive supermajorities. A constitution rewritten. Courts packed. Media captured. An electoral system engineered, district by district, to make losing almost mathematically impossible. And then, on April 12, 2026, Hungarian voters dismantled it anyway. With 97% of precincts counted, Péter Magyar's centre-right Tisza Party secured 138 seats in Hungary's 199-seat parliament — a supermajority, on 53.6% of the vote. Orbán's Fidesz collapsed to 55 seats an

Deniz Dede

Standing on Whose Shoulders? The Generational Distance in Achieving Success

"Every generation starts over." It's one of those quiet truths that doesn't fully hit you until you've watched it happen. Happen to someone else, or to yourself. A successful parent raises a child in comfort. That child, never forced to build from scratch, doesn't learn to build at all. And by the third generation, the wealth is gone. The name means nothing. The cycle begins again. But some of us are watching that pattern from the outside. Not as the third generation losing w

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Oral Exams in Combatting AI Use in Universities

When Students Can Generate Answers, Universities Need to Ask Different Questions For centuries, universities have operated on a relatively simple assumption: if a student submits an answer, the answer can be treated as evidence of what the student knows. Artificial intelligence has weakened that assumption. A student can now produce a coherent essay, summarize a difficult reading, construct an argument, or answer a conceptual question without necessarily possessing the kn

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Deniz Dede