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Turkish PM signals fresh drive for EU |
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Written by Financial Times
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Monday, 19 January 2009 11:40 |
Turkey’s prime minister arrived in Brussels on Sunday aiming to revive the country’s stalled bid for European Union membership, which is under threat from tensions over Cyprus, political stasis within Turkey and waning EU enthusiasm for enlargement.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is making his first visit to EU headquarters since December 2004, when he secured the opening of accession talks after tense negotiations. Almost immediately, a series of political crises distracted Turkey from the reforms needed for accession, EU opinion became more overtly hostile, and a sense of mutual disillusion set in.
The coming year will be critical. In December, a report by the International Crisis Group urged both sides to “break out of this downward spiral before one or the other breaks off the negotiations, which could then well prove impossible to start again”.
The biggest uncertainty lies in the outcome of peace talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. A settlement would remove one of the biggest hurdles to Turkish accession. But if talks fail and Turkey does not open ports to Greek Cypriot traffic by this year’s deadline, it could face calls to suspend membership talks entirely.
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Shoe Hurled at Bush Flies Off Turkish Maker’s Shelves |
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Written by Bloomberg
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Saturday, 20 December 2008 10:59 |
The shoe hurled at President George W. Bush has sent sales soaring at the Turkish maker as orders pour in from Iraq, the U.S. and Iran.
The brown, thick-soled “Model 271” may soon be renamed “The Bush Shoe” or “Bye-Bye Bush,” Ramazan Baydan, who owns the Istanbul-based producer Baydan Ayakkabicilik San. & Tic., said in a telephone interview today.
“We’ve been selling these shoes for years but, thanks to Bush, orders are flying in like crazy,” he said. “We’ve even hired an agency to look at television advertising.”
Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi hurled a pair at Bush at a news conference in Baghdad on Dec. 14. Both shoes missed the president after he ducked. The journalist was jailed and is seeking a pardon from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
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Pakistani, Afghan, Turkish Presidents Pledge Cooperation in Terrorism Fight |
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Written by VOA
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Saturday, 06 December 2008 08:16 |
The Presidents of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey have pledged to increase cooperation in the fight against terrorism, during talks held in Istanbul Friday. Turkey hosted the talks as part of an ongoing initiative to improve long strained relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But, the terror attacks in Mumbai cast a shadow over the proceedings.
In a joint declaration the Presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey committed themselves to strengthening their efforts against what they called the scourge of terrorism. The statement followed a day of talks aimed at developing initiatives to enhance bi-lateral relations and co-operation.
Pakistan-Afghanistan relations have been strained in recent years over the issue of Pakistan's northwestern tribal regions being used as a base for Taliban fighters seeking to overthrowing the Afghan government.
But Indian accusations that a terrorist group based in Pakistan was responsible for the recent Mumbai attack dominated the joint news conference held at the end of the talks on Friday. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari sought to stress the positive.
"Our position is that we've always been and we still are the victims of terrorism and I have read these reports, Pakistan is currently doing its own internal investigation and is waiting for concrete proof to be handed over to us for further investigation into the matter," he said.
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Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? |
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Written by Smithsonian Magazine
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Friday, 21 November 2008 14:02 |
Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization.
Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.
"Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides.
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EU tells Turkey to improve media, women's rights |
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Written by International Herald Tribune
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Wednesday, 05 November 2008 08:46 |
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In a new report card, the European Commission will tell Turkey on Wednesday that it must work harder to improve women's rights and press freedoms in order to join the European Union. In a speech at an EU-Turkey conference at the European Parliament on Tuesday, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the report will list several areas that "need to be addressed urgently." "I am thinking, for instance, of the negative atmosphere against the press, or bans of Web sites which are becoming a source of serious concern, (and) efforts are needed to protect women's rights and gender equality," said Rehn. The report card is an eagerly awaited annual event for both proponents and opponents of Turkey's membership in the EU. In Ankara, a Turkish Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, declined to comment on the report until his government has seen it. The report - which also praises Turkey, according to Rehn - is unlikely to significantly affect the negotiations regarding Turkey's EU membership, which began in 2005 and are expected to last about a decade. For instance, Turkey's entry negotiations cover 35 negotiating areas, including issues from human rights to many economic issues. To date, only eight issues are under negotiation, and the EU has accused Turkey of being too slow on others. |
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Turkey win Security Council election |
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Written by Agencies
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Friday, 17 October 2008 19:01 |
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Turkey and Austria beat Iceland in the battle for two non-permanent European seats on the 15-member council in voting at a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. Japan handily defeated Iran for a non-permanent seat on the U.N. security council and Austria and Turkey edged out Iceland in secret ballot voting Friday.
Iran, which is under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear program — received only 32 votes from the U.N. members, losing the Asian seat to Japan, which received 158 votes.
General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann said after the balloting that Austria received 133 votes, Turkey 151 votes, Japan 158 votes, Uganda 181 votes and Mexico 185.
Iceland, a country grappling with a financial crisis, received only 87 votes.
Brockmann then announced the countries elected to the council as diplomats from the 192 U.N. member states burst into applause.
Mexico was assured a Latin American seat in the election because it ran unopposed, as did Uganda for an African seat.
Candidates are required to get a two-thirds majority from members to win a seat.
The five new non-permanent members of the council will serve two-year terms.
Ten of the council's 15 seats are filled by the regional groups for two-year stretches. The other five are occupied by its veto-wielding permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
The five countries elected to the council will take their seats in January, replacing Belgium, Indonesia, Italy, Panama and South Africa.
The five countries elected last year — Libya, Vietnam, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica and Croatia — will remain on the council until Jan. 1, 2010. |
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Turkey's GDP Grew 0.5% in Quarter |
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Written by The Wall Street Journal
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Tuesday, 16 December 2008 08:07 |
Turkey's economy slowed to a near halt in the third quarter, raising the risk of a recession as the government gets ready for fresh loan talks with the International Monetary Fund.
Turkish gross domestic product expanded by 0.5% in the third quarter from the year-earlier period, the slowest rate in six years, the statistical office said. That rate came after a 2.3% annual expansion in the second quarter and 6.7% annual growth in the first three months of the year.
The agency also said the unemployment rate rose to 10.3% in the three-month period of August-October, from 9.8% in July-September.
The slowing growth makes it likely that the central bank will cut its 16.25% policy interest rate, the highest inflation-adjusted real rate of any major economy, when its monetary-policy committee meets Thursday. The inability of small and medium-size enterprises to take out loans is leading to job cuts and lower exports, the State Planning Organization said last week.
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Written by Forbes
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Saturday, 22 November 2008 09:13 |
Government pledges to stimulate the economy and the prospect of IMF aid help lift the beleaguered lira.
The Turkish lira was one of many emerging-market currencies to suffer from the financial meltdown, falling more than a third against the dollar between September and October. But the Turkish government's promise of fresh measures to boost the economy, along with the central bank's determination to boost foreign-exchange liquidity, saw confidence return to the lira on Friday.
The dollar, the pound and the euro all lost ground to the Turkish lira during midday trading in Europe on Friday, easing recent pressure from the financial crisis and the Turkish central bank's half-point rate cut on Wednesday. The dollar slumped against the Turkish lira, to 1.6758 lira, from 1.7318, while the euro fell to 2.1187 lira, from 2.1565.
The Turkish government promised action to strengthen the economy on Friday, with economy minister Mehmet Simsek promising a stimulus-package announcement from prime minister Tayyip Erdogan later this month. The package is reportedly designed to boost employment and increase lending as the economy flags.
Meanwhile, the Turkish central bank's governor, Durmus Yilmaz, said there could be extra measures taken to support foreign-exchange liquidity. Already the central bank has cut foreign-exchange lending rates for the dollar and the euro, and extended the borrowing maturity for the currencies to one month, from one week.
But the real crutch for the Turkish lira is likely to be the International Monetary Fund. Sources close to the government have been reported as saying that a provisional package from the IMF could be worth $20-$40 billion; this would improve the outlook for Turkey considerably and would also allow the government some freedom to implement its policy boosts.
In fact, the IMF loan is so important that the lira could face a renewed sell-off if the final figure falls short of expectations. Although Morgan Stanley economist Tevfik Aksoy said a $20.0 billion loan would be enough to meet Turkey's external financing requirement, anything below this would disappoint the market. "If the market starts to price in a funding size of nearly $40.0 billion, that may see the currency depreciate," he said. |
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Turkish Leader Volunteers to Be U.S.-Iran Mediator |
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Written by The New York Times
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Thursday, 13 November 2008 09:05 |
Turkey wants to be the mediator between the new Obama administration and Iran, using its growing role in the Middle East to bridge the divide between East and West, said Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Mr. Erdogan said in an interview on Sunday that Barack Obama’s election opened new opportunities for a shift in relations between the United States and Iran, Turkey’s neighbor. Mr. Obama said during his campaign that he would consider holding talks with Iran, something the Bush administration has long opposed.
Mr. Erdogan described the note of congratulations sent to Mr. Obama last week by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as “a step that has to be made use of.”
“We are ready to be the mediator,” Mr. Erdogan said, before going to the United States to attend a meeting about the global economic crisis. “I do believe we could be very useful.”
The United Nations has placed sanctions on Iran for a nuclear program that the United States and other nations say is working to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran says the program is peaceful.
Turkey supports the position of its Western allies but argues that the sanctions are weakening Iranian reformists.
“We watch the relations between Iran and U.S. with great concern,” Mr. Erdogan said. “We expect such issues to be resolved at the table. Wars are never solutions in this age.”
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86 on Trial in Turkish Coup Case |
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Written by The New York Times
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Tuesday, 21 October 2008 07:59 |
One of the most sensational public trials in Turkish history began Monday, as a court started hearing a case against 86 people — among them retired army generals, journalists and a former university rector — charged with assassinations, bomb attacks and trying to topple the government.
The focus of the case is a secret, ultranationalist group named Ergenekon, a word that refers to a legend about the genesis of the Turkish people. Prosecutors say the defendants worked together, using violence to try to create chaos in society and weaken public support for the government in order to pave the way for a coup.
The charges, unveiled this summer in a 2,455-page indictment, include the murders of a judge, priest, journalist and three Christian publishing house employees, as well as the bombing of a newspaper. The group is also charged with plotting to kill public figures, including Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose governing party, Justice and Development, is said to have been a prominent target in the plots, has been accused of using the case to silence critics who say his party has an Islamist agenda.
One of the defendants, Tuncay Ozkan, a journalist and the founder of a television network, Kanalturk, was a principal organizer of antigovernment rallies that drew hundreds of thousands into the streets last year.
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Five killed, 19 other people wounded in bus attack |
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Written by Agencies
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Thursday, 09 October 2008 07:45 |
Four police officers and a civilian driver were killed and 19 other people were wounded after a police shuttle bus came under attack by terrorists in the south-eastern province of Diyarbakır on Wednesday. CNN Turk said hand grenades were also used in the attack.
The attack came as lawmakers debate whether to extend the Turkish military's mandate to carry out cross-border operations against PKK terrorists in northern Iraq.
The police shuttle bus was carrying personnel working at the Ali Gaffar Okan Police Career Academy.
The attack comes as lawmakers debate whether to extend the Turkish military's mandate to carry out cross-border operations against the terror bases belong to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.
Parliament was voting on the one-year extension less than a week after terrorists launched an attack from Iraq that killed 17 soldiers. The military's current mandate expires Oct. 17. |
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