COLUMNISTS
September 16, 2015, Wednesday
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Turkey is falling down as palaces rise up
In countries like Turkey, where high-sounding rhetoric receives widespread acceptance, the least amount of attention is paid to numerical data. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government tends to take into consideration needs resulting from conjecture before changing the methods used for the calculation of inflation rates, per capita national income, poverty and hunger thresholds, growth rates, unemployment rates, foreign debt, current account deficit -
Are all people from Cizre Armenians?
There is no black and white story about anything that has happened in Turkey recently. There is the reality of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which won't be tolerated by any state. They are killing people, they are carrying out bloody actions, you know the story. And they recently declared “autonomy” in one city after another. No one knows what exactly this autonomy means. In practice, we see they are digging trenches and preventing security -
No, Turkey is not Syria, but…
My colleague Günal Kurşun started his latest column in Today's Zaman with a question posed to him by a friend: "Can Turkey become another Syria?" It is the same question I regularly get from people in the Netherlands who are trying to make sense of the news coming from Turkey and the region. To be honest, until recently I thought it was a bit of a silly question, no doubt based on serious concerns about what is happening in this country and in Syr -
Russia, the US and the Middle East
The press is full of reports about Russia's military activities in Syria. As a matter of fact, Russia has never denied that it is helping Syria militarily, but the new claims are about the alleged involvement of Russian troops in the actual fighting. The media would have one believe that the Russian army is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces to defeat the Syrian opposition. It is not hard to determine whether or not Russian armed fo -
Let God quench this fire
What does this headline mean to you? It implies that a grave problem has not been solved and that people are praying for God to intervene before it again takes its toll. It is fatalistic and points to failure. These words were uttered in Diyarbakır, the heart of the Southeast, which comprises the Kurdish-majority provinces. The issue is the “… problem.” I have left the name of the problem blank because it has a long history of epistemological evol -
The palace’s party
The shared view of most political observers in Turkey is that the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which just a few days ago held its fifth General Congress, is now entirely under the control of the palace, or of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Most now agree that acting prime minister and AKP general leader Ahmet Davutoğlu had no influence whatsoever on the list of figures that guide the central direction of the party. To the contrary, in fact, not a single name Davutoğlu was pus -
Opposition within government
I have always been critical of former Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan. In my opinion he was expressing his politically correct opinions while his government was doing all the wrong things. For example he was emphasizing the significance of the rule of law while public institutions were seizing control of Bank Asya in blatant violation of relevant legislation. In another instance he was indicating the importance of the independence of the Central Bank of -
Upward trend in unemployment confirmed
In my latest article on the Turkish labor market (Aug. 17), I underlined the appearance of an upward trend in unemployment, given the occurrence of a “jump in unemployment” for the May period (April-May-June). The figures for the June period (May-June-July), published yesterday by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat), confirmed this upward trend. Indeed, the general unemployment rate rose from 10.2 percent by 0.2 percentage points and the non-farm -
What is Russia doing in Syria?
Over the past few weeks Russia has escalated its military presence in Syria. This expanded presence seems to signal that Moscow intends to play a more direct role in the Syrian conflict one way or another, which has raised significant concerns in the West, who accused Russia of further stoking the fires of the conflict by continuing to provide arms to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It is no secret that Russia has been providing military assistance a -
Kids learning to think for themselves
Every responsible parent would agree that the time they spend with their children is the biggest investment they can make in what is undoubtedly their most important legacy: their kids' and their own lives. Sometimes I find when speaking to a group of Americans and I use words such as “expat” and “TCK,” the audience looks blank. It is not unusual for an individual to ask me later what “TCK” means. The first is easy: It is the -
Erdoğan is playing with fire
As we approach the Nov. 1 general election, it is obvious that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have a clear game plan: To lure Turkish nationalists to the ballot box while trying to minimize voter turnout in Kurdish provinces. Will such tactics work? The war with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has already galvanized the nationalist public. Turkish nationalism is clearly on the rise. In the meantime, the security si
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