While there are a few who still believe that the votes in the parliament might fall short of what is necessary to bring the constitutional changes that will transform the Turkish administrative system into an executive presidency to a referendum, the general conviction is that Turkey is set for a referendum come spring.
“Turkey holds key at last-ditch Cyprus talks,” was the headline of an analysis published in the EUObserver a few days before the intercommunal talks started in Geneva on Jan. 9.
Some are tired of hearing it, while some don’t even want to hear it. Yet, in terms of the leadership on the divided island of Cyprus, there is the right alignment of stars.
“Rebranding Turkey,” was the main theme of my last article. I lamented how Turkey has been rebranded as a third world country, as developments over the course of 2016 had accelerated its slide toward that category.
Turkey has become a country that cannot protect the lives of its own citizens or of its foreign guests, whether tourists or diplomats. It can now compete with Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of the frequency of terror attacks and the intensity of casualties.
You take a weekend escape to a touristy European city to get away from the depressing mood in Turkey. In a fancy restaurant, you end up having a conversation with a British couple who say they have been to Antalya but not Istanbul.
“The sociologist part of me is still looking for the answer to this question,” daily Hürriyet writer Ertuğrul Özkök wrote in an article published on Nov. 21, 2015, three weeks after the Nov. 1 general elections.
When the Çimtaş Group was first established in China in 2002, employing more than 450 Chinese nationals over time, one of their employees’ main problems was the robbing of their second or third-hand bicycles.
France’s new consul general to Istanbul, Bertrand Buchwalter, lived twice in Turkey before being appointed to his last post. He came to Ankara to live for the first time as a young boy, only to come back to the city as a young diplomat.
