EUROPEUS - cengiz_aktar

TURKEY TURNS AWAY FROM THE FUTURE

noreply@ (EUROPEUS.ORG, FIRST EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE MEDIA) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:53:16 +0200

Until very recently, Turkey was an emerging economic success story; a role model for Islamic humankind. Today the country is increasingly associated with instability and un¬certainty. Tension between the old, secularist elite and the Islamic-rooted pro-reform ruling party has reached a climax. The chief prosecutor wants to ban from politics the governing party – a party that received almost half of all votes at last year’s general election. Economic indicators are turning red. The Turkish situation is exacerbated by the fact…

EU'S REGIONAL POLICY AND KURDISH QUESTION

noreply@ (EUROPEUS.ORG, FIRST EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE MEDIA) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:00:12 +0200

The Republic of Turkey has a credibility problem regarding solutions to the Kurdish question. Accepting Kurds as interlocutors seems difficult for those ruling elites whether they are old-style Kemalists or new-fashion Islamists. Turkish governments' approach to comparable situations in other countries and mainly their stance on the Cyprus question shows a clear double standard. On Cyprus, policies to introduce an independent state, if not a federal structure are brought up, whereas a strictly centralist and �Unitarian� approach is adopted for the…

TURKEY: KARAMANLIS, AL BASHIR AND ALLIANCES OF CIVILIZATIONS

noreply@ (EUROPEUS.ORG, FIRST EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE MEDIA) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 05:58:55 +0100

A visit to Turkey for a Greek prime minister must have been the most troublesome. In fact Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis was barely able to make the visit that had been announced in 2005. Or since 1959, when Greece's legendary politician and uncle of Costas, Constantine Karamanlis visited Turkey officially in the aftermath of the Sept. 6-7, 1955 pogrom, a rather tense period began. Therefore this official visit was a great success by itself, just because it happened. In fact,…

SLEEP TIGHT: TURKEY IS NOW A CENTRAL COUNTRY!

noreply@ (EUROPEUS.ORG, FIRST EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE MEDIA) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:57:42 +0100

I listened to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's chief foreign policy adviser, Ahmet Davutoğlu, on CNN Türk last Wednesday. After hearing his remarks I realized first that relations with the European Union were considered as an exclusive foreign policy issue. Besides it was not easy to see what the amount of fertilizer to be used in agricultural products or the size of the fish to be caught has got to do with foreign policy, but let's never mind and go back…

NEW ISTANBUL

noreply@ (EUROPEUS.ORG, FIRST EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE MEDIA) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:17:04 +0100

Anything new is of great interest to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), as you might have realized. �Little America� dreams of the 1950s are finally taking shape.Everywhere cities are transformed, as structures need renovations or worn out buildings are demolished eventually. This is inevitable. The question is how the transformation is undertaken, its methods and tools. More than that of its predecessors, the AKP's renewal concept is to have endless touch ups here and there, to engage in many…

NICOLAS ET LES TURCS

noreply@ (EUROPEUS.ORG, FIRST EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE MEDIA) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 05:52:57 +0100

S’agissant de la Turquie dans l’Union européenne, Nicolas Sarkozy a l’avantage de la clarté lorsqu’il rejette son adhésion, mais pas forcément l’avantage de la lucidité. Rappelons-nous. En 1999, l’Union européenne déclare que la Turquie est un pays candidat, avec vocation à rejoindre l’Union sur la base des critères appliqués aux autres candidats. La France est signataire. La candidature est réaffirmée en décembre 2004 lorsque la Turquie est conviée à la phase des négociations d’adhésion. Quasi immédiatement, une guérilla politico-diplomatique se met…

TURKEY: EXPECTING DEMOCRACY FROM AKP

noreply@ (EUROPEUS.ORG, FIRST EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE MEDIA) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:58:00 +0100

Since 2002 the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been the lead actor in Turkey's democratic change. The European Union-inspired reforms and introduction of pious segments of society into the public sphere are the fundamentals of the party's democratic performance in its first two years. Today, based on these past credentials many are expecting the AKP to continue the reformist path. Ready to swallow manifold anti-democratic implementations of recent years they suppose the AKP will bring democracy to the country…

BULGARIA'S TURKS AND TURKEY'S KURDS

noreply@ (EUROPEUS.ORG, FIRST EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE MEDIA) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:15:00 +0100

The new leader of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) brought up the model of pro-Turkish Rights and Freedoms Party (RFP) of Bulgaria as a solution to the problems Kurds are facing in Turkey. That has triggered polemics, likely to continue for long. As a matter of fact, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan previously noted the similarities and suggested that the RFP would set a model for Kurds in certain aspects. However, there are opinion makers talking through their hats as…

NEVER CHANGING FOREIGN POLICY AND THE WAR

noreply@ (EUROPEUS.ORG, FIRST EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE MEDIA) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:15:00 +0100

How quickly we have surrendered to the logic of war while talking diplomacy, dialogue and moderation. The responsibility lies with the political elite that keeps murmuring about the same old clichés of a non-existing world. There are foreign policy positions of Turkey reminiscent of military fortifications. These are at the very foundations of the Republic and were thought as definite answers to the problems inherited from the Ottoman era: The Armenian, Greek and Kurdish questions. Nothing has changed in Turkey's position…

TURKEY: ARTICLE 301 TALES

noreply@ (EUROPEUS.ORG, FIRST EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE MEDIA) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:36:39 +0200

We have been talking about article 301 since the Turkish Penal Code (TPC) entered into force on June 1, 2005. Articles 159 and 312 of the old penal code we focused on previously. In a way, we are living in a “Turkey by figures.” Legal experts designated a total of 26 articles similar to 301, restrictive to freedom of expression in the TPC. Quite to the contrary of what politicians pretend, 29 people were tried for article 301 in 2005 and…