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

US preparing for post-Assad Syria: report

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:19:00 -0700

Dawn - By Afp - Sep. 20 - Members of Syrian opposition living in Turkey, wave their national and Turkish flags as they stage a protest against the Syrian regime outside the United Nations headquarters in Ankara on September 19, 2011. – AFP Photo WASHINGTON: The United States is i

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US response to Israel’s flotilla raid will shape the Middle East - CSMonitor.com

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Suat Kiniklioglu - Jun. 03 (Opinion) - The flotilla raid has two dimensions. First, it has irrevocably damaged Turkish-Israeli relations at the bilateral level. Turkey demands – as does the UN – an independent investigation into the murder of the nine activists and wants an apology and compensation for those killed by Israeli commandos.

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Netanyahu was right

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Haaretz - By Gideon Levy - Jun. 03 (Opinion) - All the prime minister's predictions have come true. He always said the whole world was against us - now he is right.

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Israel naval raid a folly foretold

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By David Grossman - Jun. 02 (Opinion) - How insecure, confused and panicky a country must be to act as Israel acted. With a combination of excessive military force and a fatal failure to anticipate the intensity of the reaction of those aboard the ship, it killed and wounded civilians, and did so — as if it were a band of pirates — outside Israel's territorial waters. Clearly, this assessment does not imply agreement with the motives — overt or hidden, and often malicious — of some participants in the Gaza flotilla. Not all are peace-loving humanitarians, and the declarations of some of them regarding the destruction of the state of Israel are criminal. But these facts are simply not relevant at the moment; such opinions, so far as we know, do not deserve the death penalty.

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The price of flawed policy

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Haaretz - Jun. 01 (Editorial) - The grave political damage caused by the confrontation is all too clear. Relations with Turkey will probably deteriorate further, and there may even be serious damage on the official level. The proximity talks with the Palestinians, which started lamely and with low expectations, will have trouble proceeding, now that Israel has attacked a ship intended to aid Gazans languishing under a four-year siege. Hamas claimed an outstanding victory without firing a single rocket, Egypt is under redoubled pressure to undermine the siege by opening the Rafah crossing, and it's reasonable to assume Europe and the United States will not be able to let Israel get away with a mere reprimand.

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Erdogan does DC

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Marc Lynch - Dec. 07 (Opinion) - ... there's probably no more interesting figure in Middle East diplomacy these days. Erdogan has been charting a new course for Turkish foreign policy which has sparked noisy popular acclaim with Arab publics, wary observation from Arab leaders, and jittery anxiety among many Israelis. Turkey's shifting Middle Eastern role is one of those factors which really could shake up long-standing patterns in a number of ways.

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Why isn't the Muslim world speaking up in defense of the Uighurs?

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Moisés Naím - Jul. 14 (Opinion) - ... in different countries, mullahs, imams, and assorted clerics have found the time to issue fatwas condemning among other practices, Pokémon cartoons, total nudity during sex for married couples, and the use of vaccines against polio, not to mention Salman Rushdie. They have yet to find the time to say anything about China's practices toward Uighurs.

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Turkey's scheming in Strasbourg shows it doesn't belong in the European Union.

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Christopher Hitchens - Apr. 21 (Opinion) - The most underreported story of the month must surely be the announcement by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner that he no longer supports the accession of Turkey as a full member of the European Union. His reasoning was very simple and intelligible, and it has huge implications for the Barack Obama "make nice" school of diplomacy.

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Obama's Unmacho Diplomacy

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Kathleen Parker - Apr. 07 (Opinion) - ...evaluating Barack Obama's first European tour as president, analysts have focused on whether he was quite manly enough. On their leadership blog, former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee and columnist Steve Pearlstein asked whether Obama should have "grabbed an opportunity ... to demonstrate his toughness, showing his saber as well as his smile." Verily, spoken like men. What they're really asking is: Did Obama do justice to the fire hydrant?

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Talking to Turkey, but Islam is listening

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Jack Miles - Apr. 04 (Opinion) - When President Obama addresses the Turkish parliament on Monday, he will have the chance to fulfill a campaign promise. Before the secular legislature of a Muslim-majority country -- and with the entire Muslim ummahummah listening -- he can state plainly that the United States is not at war with Islam.

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US must share power in new world order, says Turkey's controversial president

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Stephen Kinzer - Aug. 16 (Interview) - Days after Russia scored a stunning geopolitical victory in the Caucasus, President Abdullah Gül of Turkey said he saw a new multipolar world emerging from the wreckage of war. The conflict in Georgia, Gül asserted, showed that the United States could no longer shape global politics on its own, and should begin sharing power with other countries.

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No welcome - now the Turks don't even want to join Europe

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown - Aug. 04 (Editorial) - Europe had the chance to end the ideological chasm between hardline Islam and the west by embracing its Christian and Muslim heritages, to heal the world. It has chosen instead to be injudicious, obtuse and bigoted. Even George Bush understands how dumb this is.

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A bitter power struggle for the soul of democracy

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Adrian Hamilton - Jul. 29 (Opinion) - It is almost impossible to exaggerate just how important is the current crisis engulfing Turkey or to say just how grim could be the consequences of the case now being considered by its constitutional court. Within the week, or certainly by the end of next month, Turkey could be without its prime minister, its president and its ruling party. It could indeed be without a functioning government at all. Yesterday's bomb blasts by unknown terrorists are just the latest manifestation of the violence that could ensue.

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Turkey's dangerous message to the Muslim world

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Alex Taurel, Shadi Hamid - Jul. 25 (Opinion) - In recent years, mainstream Islamist groups throughout the region - including in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco - have embraced many of the foundational components of democratic life. Yet their moderation has been met with harsh government repression, or more subtle designs to restrict their political participation.

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Internet Alone Won't Change Politics

Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Mustafa Domanic - May. 23 (Opinion) - Of course, the internet has enhanced freedom of speech in most countries in unprecedented ways, by breaking government monopolies on information, communications and the media. We can say that even the sheer range of political opinions available to the public online has improved the quality of democracies around the world. Yet if we wish to start a revolution, we cannot do it from our beds with our laptops. If we want change, we have to go out and knock on the doors of those who are not our friends on Facebook and those who never used a computer.

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Turkey's War on the Truth

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:05:21 -0700

Washington Post - By Richard Cohen - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - So contemporary Turkey is entitled to insist that things are not so simple. If you use the word genocide, it suggests the Holocaust -- and that is not what happened in the Ottoman Empire. But Turkey has gone beyond mere quibbling with a word. It has taken issue with the facts and in ways that cannot be condoned. Its most famous writer, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, was arrested in 2005 for acknowledging the mass killing of Armenians. The charges were subsequently dropped, and although Turkish law has been modified in some ways, it nevertheless remains dangerous business for a Turk to talk openly and candidly about what happened in 1915.

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The Armenian genocide resolution is a needed message

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:07:22 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Greg Aghazarian, Paul Krekorian - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - What occurred during that dark period in world history is without question: Between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman Turks expelled nearly 2 million Armenians from what had been their homeland for more than 2,500 years. More than 1.5 million men, women and children were brutally murdered, targeted for no other reason other than who they were as a people.

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Bush's Turkish Gamble

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:25:02 -0700

Washington Post - By Robert D. Novak - Jul. 30 (Opinion) - The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. High-level U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq. While detailed operational plans are necessarily concealed, the broad outlines have been presented to select members of Congress as required by law. U.S. Special Forces are to work with the Turkish army to suppress the Kurds' guerrilla campaign. The Bush administration is trying to prevent another front from opening in Iraq, which would have disastrous consequences. But this gamble risks major exposure and failure.

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Foreign Policy: Seven Questions: Between God and Ataturk

Thu, 10 May 2007 15:14:31 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Andrew Mango - May. 10 (Interview) - Turkey's moderate Islamist ruling party recently provoked massive protests and even the veiled threat of military intervention over its bid to add the presidency to its pillars of power. The clash has exposed deep rifts in a country that prides itself on being a shining example of a Muslim democracy. FP asked Andrew Mango, a prominent scholar of Turkey and an acclaimed biographer of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, what's really at stake in Turkey today.

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A warning for Turkey

Mon, 07 May 2007 19:19:33 -0700

The Guardian - By Victoria Brittain - May. 07 (Opinion) - Fifteen years ago a struggle for power between new forces of political Islam and a military establishment took place in Algeria, paralleling to an alarming degree what is happening in Turkey. This struggle ended in a military coup that plunged Algeria into a cycle of violence; so far 200,000 people have been killed, tens of thousands jailed, a million internally displaced, and tens of thousands exiled. How could such a catastrophe have overtaken a country and political leaders whose prestige reached across the third world in the 1960s and 70s? Algeria is a warning to Turkey that even the towering legacy of Ataturk cannot protect it for ever. Algeria's war for independence from France, under the iconic leadership of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), became a reference point for African and Palestinian anti-colonial struggles. Under President Houari Boumédienne the country was the political and intellectual centre of a confident, secular, socialist third world movement that collapsed with the end of the cold war. But the FLN did not provide the solid political framework for building a country that was equally cursed with great poverty and great oil and gas wealth. The post-Boumédienne years of the 80s were marked by corruption and repression at home, while young Algerians drawn to the CIA-funded jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan would return home with an ideology very different to the FLN's.

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The battle for Turkey's soul

Thu, 03 May 2007 14:35:12 -0700

Economist - May. 03 (Opinion) - AT A time when Muslim fundamentalism seems to be on the rise all around the world, the sight of somewhere between half a million and a million people marching through Istanbul in defence of secularism is a remarkable one. But then Turkey is a remarkable place. As a mainly Muslim country that practises full secular democracy, it is a working refutation of the widespread belief that Islam and democracy are incompatible.

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What Turkey teaches about democracy

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:36:02 -0700

Asia Times - By M K Bhadrakumar - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - The 85-year-old Turkish state finds itself at a crossroads. But the implications of Erdogan's final choice go far beyond Turkey's borders. Turkey's standing as a regional powerhouse, its strategic location as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East, its historical and cultural heritage in the Muslim world - all these are bound to come into play in the coming months. Meanwhile, Turkey is working itself into a state of frenzy. Commenting on Saturday's rally, the establishment newspaper Turkish Daily News threatened that even if Erdogan was elected president, he wouldn't be allowed to govern in peace.

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