It was not surprising to see President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan playing the migrant card against the European Union on Nov. 25. “Look, if you go further, the border gates will be opened. You should know that,” he said.
The European Parliament will vote on a resolution on Thursday that suggests temporarily freezing Turkey’s accession talks in the light of an increase in the violations of human rights and the deterioration in the use of fundamental freedoms in the aftermath of July 15 coup attempt.
Next week will mark the third month of Turkey’s Euphrates Shield Operation, which has been able to successfully secure an area including a 100-kilometer-strip of the Turkish-Syrian border and clear an area of around 1,700 kilometers square inside Syria from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
It was on Oct. 11, when the head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Devlet Bahçeli revived a long-standing discussion on the introduction of the presidential system and signaled his party’s support to a charter amendment to be drafted by the Justice and Development Party (AKP)
After a week of continued earthquakes in ties between Turkey and the European Union following the arrests of 12 lawmakers of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), including its co-leaders, Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, and the editor-in-chief and a number of writers of daily Cumhuriyet, it seems both parties are willing to launch a new process of dialogue.
Repeating the fact that Turkey is going through the most difficult times in its history in every news piece or column is not a very pleasant thing to do
When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in late 2002, they had sought to try to defuse the concerns sparked in the West by defining their political movement as “democratic conservative” and advocate of universal human rights values as well as fundamental freedoms.
It has already been a year since Turkey held parliamentary elections that allowed the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to form a majority government in parliament with nearly 50 percent of the votes following June 7 polls that obliged the parties to form a coalition government.
It has been more than three months since a group of military personnel loyal to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen attempted to stage a coup in Turkey on July 15, killing around 250 people and wounding more than 2,000.
