Would it be possible to consider for one second that the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) might engage in an election alliance with the Islamist Felicity Party (SP)? The two managed to come together in a coalition government back in the 1970s and indeed co-signed the order sending Turkish troops to Cyprus in 1974.
Why did Abdullah Gül drop out of the race for the presidency? Was he in the race anyway? Why did Bülent Arınç make a comeback from the shadows and meet with the president? Was it a coincidence that Arınç’s son-in-law was released from prison and his former press advisor was no longer required to report to the police weekly? Did Arınç indeed play any significant role in “persuading” Gül to give up hopes of a political comeback? What was the meaning of the statement, “Those who abandon us may not only find fortune in their new endeavors but also lose their place among us?”
A new crisis with Europe is brewing. European countries have been announcing one after another that they have no intention of allowing Turkish politicians to stage political campaign events on their territories. Those statements, however, appear to fall on deaf ears in Turkey.
Days before a “social event” attended by the leaders of the two sides of Cyprus on April 16 evening, various segments of the Turkish Cypriot community developed a natural anxiety over what might emerge during the dinner.
It was a great sorrow to lose my father more than 15 years ago. Only days before his sudden and unexpected death, I had the opportunity to talk over coffee with him on various issues, including hypocrisies within communities.
Whatever has been happening in Turkey and whatever Turkey has been undertaking in the regional and international arenas are more or less related to the upcoming presidential elections.
Ending the over half-century-old with cannot be described with that “searching a calf under an ox” cliché. Fifty years of on-off Cyprus intercommunal negotiations must be enough to understand that one of the two parties to the problem has never had any intention to compromise and share power on the basis of political equality.
“Social encounter” is the fashionable term nowadays for what used to be jargon for “non-meeting” or “non-paper” in classical diplomacy. If there is a potential problem for politicians or opponents or in this case, the two Cyprus leaders, in gathering around a table, call it a “social encounter.”
Hürriyet Daily News editor-in-chief Murat Yetkin wrote an excellent article last week stressing the importance of press freedom for everyone. That has been a subject I have been trying to underline – despite all the challenges it entailed when I was in editorial positions - throughout the past 40 years I have been in this profession.
