NewsTrust - Turkey - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Why Turkey No Longer Needs Israel

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

World Politics Review - By Idris Ahmedi - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - ReutersWhy Turkey No Longer Needs IsraelWorld Politics ReviewAt first sight, ideology readily suggests itself as the main explanation for Turkey's redefinition of its relations with Israel. After all, the gradual rift and impending breakdown of strategic relations between the two ...Has Turkey turned its back on the West?GlobalPostTurkish PM calls Cyprus, Israel drilling "madness"ReutersTurkish PM lashes out at Cyprus, Israel over oilCBS NewsWND.comall 510 news articles »

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Please, Kick Us: More Amateur Hour in the State Department

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Ricochet - By Claire Berlinski - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - I recently interviewed Turkey's former ambassador to the United States, Faruk Loğoğlu. He is appalled--like many in Turkey--by the soft-headedness of the Obama' Administration's diplomacy in this region. He finds Obama's speeches about his personal warmth toward Islam ludicrous and inappropriate. “Obama can’t play the religious game," he said. "He should be playing the security game. His policy toward Turkey is a bad imitation of the worst parts of Orientalism.” ... It is hugely significant when the tone coming out of the State Department is childish, inappropriate, and supine; it is fundamentally unserious to put such a message on Twitter; and it is beyond belief that anyone there would think "sarcasm" about this situation--we are talking about kidnapped US citizens who are being held hostage in Iran--conveys American resolve.

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US Journalist Deported from Turkey After Reporting on Plight of Kurds

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Jake Hess - Aug. 23 (Interview) - Twenty-five-year-old American journalist Jake Hess was arrested in Turkey nearly two weeks ago and deported back to the United States over the weekend. Turkey accused him of allegedly having ties with the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which Turkey and the United States classify as a terrorist organization. But Hess and his lawyer have maintained that Hess was targeted because of his writings. His recent articles for Inter Press Service have focused on Turkish soldiers deliberately starting forest fires, the depopulation of Kurdish villages, and Turkish-Iranian air strikes on Kurdish homes in northern Iraq. [includes rush transcript - partial]

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Jamal Dajani: How Gilad Shalit Will Save Netanyahu

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Jul. 02 (Opinion) - Mark my words, Gilad Shalit is coming home. He will soon be set free but not because of German mediations or the thousands of appeals made by his parents and their supporters. He's coming home because Bibi needs Gilad more than Gilad needs him. In a

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The Incendiary Danger of Unchecked Power: Bibi as Bullyboy

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - By Bernard Weiner - Jun. 14 (Opinion) - Take a large dose of hubris, combine it with Lord Acton's famous dictum ("power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely"), and you emerge with an explosive, reckless abuse of authority on a number of fronts.

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Why Turkey is Looking East

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Jun. 11 (Opinion) - Ha'aretzWhy Turkey is Looking EastHuffington Post (blog)Then came the surprise uranium deal with Tehran, undermining Western pressure on Iran to come clean about its nuclear program, followed by the Israeli ...Erdogan wins raucous reception from Arab leadersJerusalem PostOfra Bengio / Turkey's Strategic U-Turn, Israel's Tactical MistakesHa'aretzLosing TurkeyAl-Ahram WeeklyWall Street Journal?-The Hindu?-BBC Newsall 804 news articles??

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Israel: Flotilla Videos Gone Viral

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Maya Norton - Jun. 05 (Opinion) - An Israeli video called "Flotilla Choir: We Con the World" has gone viral on Facebook in the last 24 hours. While it shows no compunction about the violence involved in the flotilla incident, it aggressively illustrates the widely held Israeli belief that Hamas is responsible for the poor state of well-being of the people of Gaza.

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Kucinich Circulating Letter to Colleagues Regarding Mavi Marmara Incident

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Kucinich.us - By Dennis Kucinich - Jun. 04 (Advocacy) - At least nine were killed in the incident aboard the Mavi Marmara. Hundreds of civilians were taken into custody and goods were confiscated. Since the United States considers Israel our most important ally in the region, whose survival is a of primary concern, it is incumbent upon the Commander in Chief to call Israel to an accounting for its conduct in planning and executing the deadly military attack in international waters upon a peaceful flotilla carrying citizens from over 50 countries.

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Operation Make The World Hate Us

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By Leon Wieseltier - Jun. 04 (Opinion) - Israel does not need enemies: it has itself. Or more precisely: it has its government. The Netanyahu-Barak government has somehow found a way to lose the moral high ground, the all-important war for symbols and meanings, to Hamas. That is quite an accomplishment. Operation Make the World Hate Us, it might have been called.

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Israel: Hasbara, Lies, and Videotape

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:15:27 -0700

Huffington Post - Jun. 04 (Opinion) - As thousands of outraged demonstrators poured into the streets of Ankara and several capitals across the globe in the aftermath of Israel's bloody attack on an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip early Monday, an Israeli sergeant stood in front of

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Jamal Dajani: Look Who's Missing from Washington

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - On Thursday President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed an arms control treaty hailed by the White House as a big step forward "to reset relations with Russia", as well as for the US president's broader nuclear agenda. The

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Turkey: Google Banned

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Deborah Ann Dilley - Jul. 15 (Opinion) - Turkey and My Foreign Perspectives reports that yet another lawsuit has been filed in Turkey that has resulted in the banning of another web service: Google.com. She adds “Do these silly courts not understand how they impair their people from becoming more educated and doing better business by blocking the very resources needed to build

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Erdogan and Davos

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment: Global Affairs - By Howard Eissenstat - Feb. 19 (Opinion) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's outburst at The World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, in which he called Israeli President Shimon Peres a baby killer and much besides before stomping off the stage in a huff has served as a sort of Rorschach inkblot test for many observers, with supporters of Israel being roundly critical of the Turkish Prime Minister and critics of Israel being broadly supportive of his actions.

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Phony Maneuver

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Serge Truffaut - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - Obviously, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has intoned the eternal refrain heads of state employ in this type of situation: The intervention will be as brief as possible. The least that one may say is that commentary comes up a bit short, or rather is somewhat misleading. For by isolating the present episode, by extracting it from the ongoing saga of over more than three decades, Erdogan most notably skipped over the acts Turkey effected since the end of last summer.

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Gender equality and Islamic headscarves

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Immanent Frame - By Joan Wallach Scott - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - History, both in France and Turkey, contradicts the claim that secularism guarantees equal rights for women and men. The French secular state long denied women the right to vote and its civil code enforced male prerogatives over women in families until well into the twentieth century. The Turkish republic (a one-party state until after WWII) was inspired by the French republic (although it gave women the vote in 1934, ten years before France) and it modeled its penal code on Italy's. Until that code was revised in 2001 (with the support of the AKP), women were defined as men's property and rape was considered a violation of a male property-holder's right. Ideas about family honor resting on the control of women's sexuality are not unique to Islam, nor are they foreign to secularism.

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Let the Americans Try and Stop Us! ...

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:17:49 -0700

Hurriyet - By Ertugrul Ozkok - Oct. 23 (Opinion) - Yes, we must now address Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish regional authority in northern Iraq. We need to deliver this final message to him in the strongest fashion possible: "You have two paths before you. Either you will be our neighbor, or our target."

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Genocide: An inconvenient truth

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:03:20 -0700

Salon - By Gary Kamiya - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - The genocide was not carried out by the Republic of Turkey, which did not exist yet, but by the ruling party in the final years of the collapsing Ottoman regime. To this day the Turkish government has never acknowledged that what transpired was a monstrous and intentional crime against humanity. Instead, it claims that the Armenians were simply unfortunate victims of a chaotic civil war, that only 300,000 to 600,000 died, that Turks actually died in greater numbers, and that the Armenians brought their fate on themselves by collaborating with the Russians.

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Pelosi's Most Dangerous Ploy

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:25:16 -0700

Human Events - By Jed Babbin - Oct. 15 (Opinion) - Congressional Democrats anxious to force a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq are frustrated by their inability to muster a veto-proof majority for legislation that would establish a firm date for retreat. But what they cannot do directly they are now working hard to do indirectly.

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Informed Comment: Who Lost Turkey?

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:11:09 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Oct. 12 (Opinion) - Turkey is a NATO ally, that it stood with the US during the Korean War (in which its troops fought), during the Cold War, and during Bush's war on terror. Turkey gives the US military facilities, including the Incirlik Air Force base, through which large amounts of materiel for the US forces in northern Iraq flows. First, the Bush administration insisted on invading Iraq and overthrowing the secular Iraqi government. It thereby let the Salafi Sunni and the Shiite fundamentalist genies out of the bottle and created vast instability on the southeastern border. It would be as though a US ally had invaded Mexico and inadvertently unleashed a Marxist peasant rebellion against San Diego. Secular Turkey already felt itself menaced by the Shiite ayatollahs of Iran and by the rising Salafi and al-Qaeda trends, and the US made everything far worse.

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In 2000, Candidate Bush Called Armenian Massacre A 'Genocidal Campaign'

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:59:12 -0700

Think Progress - Oct. 10 (Opinion) - when Bush was running for president in 2000, he wrote a letter to the Armenian National Committee affirming that the Armenians were "subjected to a genocidal campaign." He promised that if "elected president," he would make sure that the United States "properly recognizes" the tragedy.

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Turkey: Now That's Democracy!

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:25:35 -0700

Media Channel - Jul. 23 (Opinion) - ... The trap for international journalists and commentators is that, if they do not know the details of Turkey's political and media life, they will end up with analyses that hardly reflect the reality of Turkish society. The result is the shallow analyses of the Turkish election beamed around the world on BBC or CNN, or published by the AP, the NY Times, or the LA Times. In other words, what is displayed on the TV screen does not necessarily represent the reality of a nation's politics. Turkey's citizens, who are aware of the problems in the Turkish media, were not duped. ... A final, more general message also emerged from yesterday's Turkish election. Turkey is a developing country which has seen much upheaval, of both the political and economic sort, in the past 80 years. However, in the end Turkey is on the right path, developing rapidly, and deciding its own future independently through electoral processes which are more transparent than those used in the U.S. In general, developing countries need to be allowed to find their own paths to development, even if those paths may seem different or vaguely threatening to those who are not familiar with the developing countries' societies. That means that developing countries need advice not diktats, respect and dialogue not condescension, from the "Northern" industrialized countries. Turkey is showing what amazing progress can be achieved when a developing country is given the necessary support on its path to development and democracy.

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A Turning Point For Turkey

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:54:25 -0700

Pajamas Media - By Barry Rubin - Jul. 20 (Opinion) - Along came some significant social change. A lot of small businesses in the country's center--called the Anatolian Tigers--made money, creating a new middle class of rather traditionalist people. And a lot of peasants migrated from villages to the big cities. The more socially conservative, relatively religious group began to feel its power and Islam returned as a political factor. At the same time, the establishment politicians grew increasingly corrupt, bickering, and incompetent. This paved the way for what happened five years ago, when an Islamic - some say Islamist - movement, in the form of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a landslide in Turkey's elections. Due to the country's electoral law (a party must get 10 percent to win any seats) all but one of the AKP's rivals failed to obtain any place in parliament. That meant that with only 34 percent of the votes, the AKP got two-thirds of the seats.

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A Critical Moment For Turkey

Wed, 16 May 2007 11:30:30 -0700

Daniel Pipes - By Daniel Pipes - May. 16 (Opinion) - My visit to Istanbul this week comes in the midst of the greatest challenge to the Turkish secular republic since its creation in 1923. Founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire, the republic came into existence at about the high-water mark of Western confidence, when it appeared that European ways would become the global template. Atatürk imposed a dizzying array of changes, including European laws, the Latin alphabet, the Gregorian calendar, personal last names, hats instead of fezzes, monogamy, Sunday as the day of rest, a ban on dervishes, the legal right to drink alcohol, and Turkish as a liturgical language.

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Turkey's Quest for Modernity

Thu, 10 May 2007 15:21:57 -0700

Middle East Online - By Rami G. Khouri - May. 10 (Opinion) - Turkey's tempestuous current events are historic in their implications for this country and the entire Middle East, but they are about much more than a tug-of-war between Islamism and secularism. The constitutional stand-off concerning the election of the next president - pitting the ruling, mild Islamist, Justice and Development Party (AKP) against the largely secular opposition backed by the armed forces - is just the pivot of a historic, ongoing Turkish attempt to balance seven different phenomena that have never been fully synthesized into a single state identity. These are: the Islamic religion, Turkish nationalism, political secularism, democratic governance, citizenship rights, pluralism in a multi-ethnic society, and the role of the military vis-à-vis the previous six items in this list.

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