Was it indeed an effort aimed at arresting the decline in the share of his Movement for Social Democracy’s (EDEK) votes or was he really concerned about the Cyprus talks process?
It’s difficult to understand for people outside this region, but without any discrimination, Turks, Iranians, Arabs, Kurds or other peoples of this huge region consider great people of the past as their cultural forefathers
Turkey has a very intense agenda
The country was preparing to learn what a “Turkish-style presidential regime” might mean but was instead given practical lessons on “Turkish-style critical media domestication”
Obviously some degree of “power contest” between the president and the prime minister cannot be avoided if both of them have a political background and strong aspirations to engrave their name on the list of people who contributed most to the advancement of his nation
Irrespective of political affiliations, there is one issue on which there is an almost complete consensus in this country: Turkey needs a new constitution
Turkey’s almighty president declared that he would neither accept nor respect the Constitutional Court’s verdict which paved the way for the “controlled release” (pending trial) of daily Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dündar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gül last week by a lower court, ending their 92-day imprisonment.
Looking back from the Turkey of February 2016 to the pre-June 2015 Turkey, it is almost impossible not to feel the pain of the great golden opportunity lost for a political resolution to the greatest ever challenge faced by republican Turkey, the Kurdish issue
Recently at a gathering of journalists friends, we were complaining that while there has not been any improvement in the climate of freedoms in the country, less and less craftsmen were writing about the lack of freedom of expression and, of course, media freedom, being castrated in the country
