The words in the headline were uttered by Celal Doğan after his visit to Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan last week
A group of parliamentary deputies called on the Turkish government to resume the Kurdish peace bid immediately on July 3, after the peace process was shelved two months before the June 7 general election campaign.
It was something predictable to say that Turkish foreign policy, especially its policy regarding Syria and the Middle East, could not remain the same in a coalition as it was when Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) was in a single-party government
A last-day move of Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli put an end to the last hopes for joint action by opposition parties, leading to İsmet Yılmaz, the incumbent defense minister of the outgoing AK Parti government, winning the Speaker of Parliament election on July 1.
It was expected that the new Turkish parliament would fail to elect a new speaker in the first two rounds of voting on June 30, when a two thirds majority was needed
Everything seems surreal in the Turkish capital nowadays
As the Turkish military plays with time to fulfil a government directive to intervene in Syria in order to establish a security strip there, foreign policy issues’ importance rise in the agenda of coalition talks between the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) and the social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP), which are expected to start later this week
Turkey’s government wants more active military action to support the Free Syrian Army (FSA) against the regime, Kurdish and jihadist forces in Syrian territory, but the military is reluctant to do so, playing for time as the country heads for a new coalition government, official sources told the Hürriyet Daily News
With ISIL militants having launched new attacks on June 25 on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane by the Turkish border, killing dozens after being pushed back by Kurdish forces in January, Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoğlu is heading to a crossroads on what to do about the country’s Kurdish problem.
