Those in the West who love criticizing Turkey should take a step back and admit that Turkey is giving a huge humanitarian lesson to the world
When you are in it, you might sort of get used to it. That’s why sometimes it becomes important when someone holds a mirror.
Pope Francis will be visiting Turkey this weekend. This will be his sixth trip outside of Italy after he became pope in 2013. The fact that Turkey ranks among the first countries Pope Francis is visiting already tells us a lot.
“When it comes to foreseeing the refugee crisis, I’d give the Turkish government a score of 2 out of 10. But in terms of the humanitarian aspect, I’d give it an 8 or even 9 out of 10,” Murat Erdoğan, the head of the Migration and Politics Research Center at Ankara’s Hacettepe University, told me.
“I don’t run in the Istanbul marathon. It really isn't an athlete-friendly event. Just trying to reach the starting point is a hassle, while trying to get to your house after the finish is another hassle,” a friend told me.
In April 2015, Armenians will be commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 1915 massacres, which they believe amounted to genocide.
I was planning to write a follow up to the latest article I wrote about Turkish-Greek cultural cooperation, which I learned had been translated and published on a number of Greek websites.
Last year, 850,000 Turkish tourists visited Greece; this number is expected to rise to 1 million by the end of the year
“Your luck is that your Islamists are not successful economically,” a Turkish friend of mine told a Tunisian friend.
