A certain tall man, or someone trying to appease him, may place the “terrorist” label on us, but what can be wrong in saying that one opposes war unless it was waged for the defense of our own country? What is certainly wrong is the fact that the police and the judiciary considering such a label coming from above as a sacrosanct order, and trying to appease the power holder by detaining and launching a judicial probe against university students exercising their right to freedom of expression.
Turkey has been fuming over a U.N. report that stressed the country’s state of emergency has led to “profound human rights violations,” and High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein was accused of “collaborating with terrorist organizations.
What an interesting society Turks are. Sülün Osman was a famous Turkish swindler of the 1950s and 1960s. He was reported to have “sold” many of the landmarks of Istanbul to newcomer Anatolian peasants during those decades of “gold rush” from rural to urban.
Relations between Turkey and the U.S. have probably never been so tense.
There is a claim. It is radical but it has not officially been denied by either the Turkish presidency or the office of the Turkish Cypriot prime minister. Doğan News Agency, quoting unnamed people with knowledge of the recent talks, reported that at their meeting in Ankara President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “advised” Prime Minister Tufan Erhürman and Foreign Minister Kudret Özersay to work to increase the Turkish Cypriot population to a level to achieve equality with the Greek Cypriot population.
It is claimed that the Cyprus conundrum has reached a “make or break” stage. Why? Has there been any progress in any of the outstanding issues? No. On the contrary, because of the hydrocarbon complexities it can be said that the Eastern Mediterranean has become so flammable that one spark could produce a total disaster.
Some commentators think Turkish Cyprus’s new four-way coalition government will be short-lived. Once the required legislative changes have been made, they said, together with probes into alleged misuses of power and corruption during the previous National Unity Party (UBP) governments, the four-party coalition would steer the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to an early election late in 2018. Ankara has also voiced skepticism, signaling a preference for a strong three-way coalition of conservative parties.
New Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Tufan Erhürman and Turkish Cypriot Foreign Minister Kudret Özersay were in Ankara on March 7, amid a rather heavy agenda topped by the need to fine tune positions on the next step to be taken for a resolution on the island.
Who would’ve thought a young Turkish Cypriot man, accompanied by a cameraman, would cross the Cyprus buffer zone and ask Greek Cypriots the very simple, yet difficult to answer, question: “Would you want your son or daughter to marry a Turkish Cypriot?”
